(Rep. Lucien N. Nedzi, 1969, from Congressional Pictorial Directory.)

Mac was just back from the beach on the annual Shower’s family reunion, and I was just returned from the First Congressional District of Michigan, and it was clearly time to get together at Willow and talk about what happened to the Intelligence Community in the Ford Administration. He was intimately involved in all of it from his new perch on the IC Staff at CIA.

It was the organization that acted in the CIA Director’s community role as the pater familia of the fractious agencies allegedly under his charge. In that role, he was known as the “Director of Central Intelligence,” not the Director of CIA.

I know, I know, small difference semantically, but large in terms of authority.

It was 2011. In the decade-long series of interviews, we had arrived at that strangest part of American political life, or at least the strangest until Donald Trump’s candidacy.

I was interested in the Michigan congressional delegation, since I could use my parent’s address in The Little Village By the Bay for voting purposes, provided I didn’t also try to vote in Northern Virginia. I had not gotten around to changing things since I had voted there (absentee) for most of my military career.

“Trooper Bart” Stupak was my Congressman from Michigan’s First District then, a ruggedly handsome former State Patrol officer. He was a Democrat, and a relatively conservative one as reflects the philosophy of the First District, who are country working people, though he went with his party on 96% of his votes.

At the end of his elected time, he came in conflict with the leadership of his party on the healthcare debacle, largely over the issue of Choice, which was a hot button Up North, and ultimately impacted his decision to leave the Congress. I saw him dozens of times when I worked on the Hill, and met him on at least one occasion. It is not that unusual to run into celebrities here in town, or at least the political versions.

I marched up and introduced myself as a constituent, he seemed vaguely alarmed.

His unease probably stemmed from the fact that folks from the second-largest Congressional district east of the Mississippi get down to the nation’s capital get down to bother him. The First, as you know, encompasses the entire Upper Peninsula, and depending on the population level, a good chunk of the lower one, too.

That includes the Trolls who live in the Little Village By the Bay. I say “trolls” because that is what the independent-minded residents of the proud Upper Peninsula (the “UP”) call all of us who live “below the bridge” at Mackinaw. For our part, the only things in the UP worth knowing are Lake Superior, the pasties, iron ore, moose, wolves and the odd bear. And snow, of course. That goes without saying.

(Former President Jerry Ford as a WWII naval officer).

We had our favorite sons in Michigan. Jerry Ford was a University of Michigan grad and a Navy vet from Mac’s war. He represented Michigan’s Fifth District for a quarter century, the one with all the block-headed Dutch in it. His last eight years in Congress were as the Republican Minority Leader in the House when that seemed like a permanent position.

He was a reliable enough apparatchik to be pulled onto the Warren Commission whitewash of the Kennedy killing, remember?

When Betty Ford passed away it brought the Ford Administration to a final end, with many of those loose ends still unraveled. My son and I went down to the National Mall the night after Jerry passed, and his funeral cortege made the pilgrimage in front of our vantage point near the Washington Monument, passing his former homes in Alexandria and the national sites on the mall.

Between the Warren Commission, the pardon of President Nixon and the conquest of the Republic of Vietnam nine months into his unelected Presidency, you would think he would be a more controversial figure than history has cast him. But I say the hell with it.

He was a good congressman for us in Grand Rapids, when the Socotras lived there, and people genuinely liked him.

During Ford’s incumbency, foreign policy was characterized in procedural terms by the increased role Congress began to play in that sand-box, and by the corresponding curb on the powers of the President. That is what ultimately brings me around to the matter of Lucien Norbert Nedzi (born the year after my Dad). He was the Democratic Congressman from the 14th, later the 1st, between the special election in 1961 and the time he threw in the towel in 1980 and did not seek re-election.

Nedzi may be the last guy in a position to know what was going on then, besides Mac. Nedzi was born in Hamtramck, the Polish enclave surrounded by Detroit. He was a Wolverine, like President Ford and me, and went to the U-of-D law school in between stints in the Army in the Pacific War and his recall for Korea.

Getting recalled to Asia to face hoards of Commies after defeating the Empire of Japan was a tough blow for a lot of former GI’s and sailors, but they just sucked it up and did what they had to do. Mac was pleased that his naval career had him in Europe for the conflict they called a “police action,” which would have been more suited to Trooper Bart, but never mind. Mac was always careful to point out that he may have done the Pacific War, the Cold one and Vietnam, but he did not do Korea.

Like I said, Nedzi was elected as a Democrat in 1961 after Thaddeus Machrowicz died in office. The key to his being remembered at all is the curious thing that happened in May of 1973. Lucien had the unique position to be a member of the House Armed Services Committee, and Chairman of the Special Subcommittee on Intelligence.

(CIA Director William Colby).

Director Colby at CIA had inherited the toxic “Family Jewels” from Jim Schlesinger which detailed the activities conducted by the CIA that might have “exceeded the charter of the Agency,” in the delicate terminology of the day.

Colby was summoned to discuss the matter with Nedzi on the Hill in an extraordinary session detailed by a declassified Memo-for-the-Record drafted by CIA Inspector General William Broe. I asked Mac about it, and he beamed in remembrance over his Virgin Mary at the long mahogany Willow bar. He even had a copy of it, printed off years later when it entered the public record.

The two hour-session included a discussion of the full report, item-by-item, including the sensitive portion that remains redacted to this day.

According to Broe, the congressman found it found sobering. Some of the topics included:

a. Alien documentation furnished to the Secret Service. Nedzi desired more information concerning the reason why issued, the use, and how controlled.

b. Financial support to the White House in connection with the replies to letters and telegrams as a result of the President’s speech on Cambodia in 1970. He requested more information on this subject.

c. Beacons furnished to Ambassadors. He was interested in the number issued to Ambassadors and the position the State Department took on the use of these beacons. He was interested if the Department of State was pushing this program, as he believed they should be.
d. Logistics’ acquisition of police equipment. He questioned whether LEAA, Department of Justice, should not be doing this rather than the Agency.

e. He noted Logistics furnished telephone analyzers, and desired to know what they were and how used.

f. [redacted]

(“Fugitive Financier” Robert Vesco).

g. OER’s crash project concerning Robert L. Vesco requested by the DCI. The Congressman was interested in who outside the Agency instigated the project and why was it stopped.

h. Several ORD projects indicated research done without knowledge of the host system or on unwitting subjects. He was of the opinion that this was risky and recommended it be terminated. He stated he would like to see a directive go out to the researchers concerning these practices.

i. John Dean’s request re Investors Overseas Service. He reviewed the six reports that had been furnished. He noted, however, that the item stated “there were multiple channels to the Agency from the White House” and requested information concerning these channels.

j. Alien passports. Mr. Colby advised that he planned to review this whole subject and the Congressman agreed with the need to do so.
The Congressman asked Mr. Colby if the Agency had considered how much of the information just reviewed with him could be made public. Mr. Colby stated this had not been done yet, and spoke to the question of sources, methods, and the impact on the institution. The Congressman stated that in the current climate he felt it was necessary to open up more information to help clear the air.

Mr. Colby stated the Agency would give the matter deep consideration, and added he had been thinking of a general statement along these lines to be used at his confirmation hearing.
The cat was about to come out of the bag- or at least part of the cat out of one of the bags. Tip O’Neil acquiesced when Nedzi demanded to be placed in charge of a Select Committee to formally “clear the air,” a position he assumed in February, 1975, and which he abruptly resigned in June.

I wondered about that, since Otis Pike replaced him as chair for a tumultuous and shocking set of disclosures about what had been going on for years. I will be interested to see what Mac has to say about that. I wonder if Nedzi found out something about the IC that he did not want to have on his permanent record. After all, he was in a position to suddenly be investigating the work he should have been doing as the senior oversight official on the IC.

I know this: in the Congressman’s remaining three terms in Congress, he never got closer to the intelligence community than the Joint Committee on the Library. I am not going to speculate any further, though.

There is a way to find out, though. Like Trooper Bart, Nedzi didn’t return to Michigan when his congressional time was done. He went into the lobbying business, and lived right here in McLean, and his number is in the phone book.

If he is not in the same boat as my Dad was, he might have been able to answer a few questions if I called him up. You never can tell. Thank God we had Mac to ask. He leaned over one time and whispered: “LBJ did it.”

I just nodded and made a note on the cocktail napkin.

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com