Gill Says Intelligence Groups Were Ineffective in Cambridge

Jessie L. Gill, the FBI informer, charged in an article written for today's Crimson that Federal intelligence agencies conducted ineffective counter-intelligence operations against Cambridge New Left organizations in the late 1960s.

Gill also charged that the Harvard and MIT administrations during that time by "carefully" ignoring the growth of radical organizations and putting deliberate pressure on the Cambridge housing market, were actually conducting classified research into "the specific stress limits of a cross section of the American population."

Rigid intelligence agency policy, overworked agents and internecene quarreling between agencies all contributed to "a staggering attrition rate among Bureau informants," Gill said.

"The rigidity of J. Edgar Hoover's policy forbade the creative individuality so vital to the effective structure of an intelligence operation," Gill wrote. (See page 3).

She added, "Those (informants) who succeeded in the field owed their success to outright rebellion against illogical and/or potentially compromising Bureau directives."

Gill added that the FBI engaged in "childish fights with its sister-service, the CIA," adding that the two intelligence networks "continuously battled one another for primeval territorial jurisdiction."

Bungling by the intelligence networks played directly into the hands of the two Cambridge universities, Gill said, giving them the necessary latitude to perform their controlled experiment.

Harvard and MIT laid the foundation for the experiment, Gill said, by "quietly gobbling up low-income housing and deliberately creating a housing shortage affecting the poor of the city."

Added stress was given the experiment when Harvard covertly aided the growth of local radical groups, Gill said. She said Harvard "in part funded" activist organizations, adding that "known communists were admitted to Radcliffe and Harvard."

"There is no question but that the students were utilized as pawns, and that the problems were artificially created," she concluded.