FBI Offers to Clear Files on Salvador Protesters

WASHINGTON — FBI Director William S. Sessions, in an unusual action, Friday invited persons and groups whose names were recorded in an FBI investigation of a group opposed to El Salvador’s government to request that the listings be expunged from FBI files.

Sessions issued the invitation in testimony before a House subcommittee that questioned him about the FBI’s probe of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador (CISPES).

Sessions has acknowledged that the investigation, which he said relied too heavily on an informant later found to be unreliable, was too broad and was one of which the FBI is not proud.

Obviously seeking to make amends for the flawed probe, Sessions disclosed to the House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on civil and constitutional rights that he has ordered senior FBI officials to prevent any of the file information from being used to block the hiring by government agencies of persons who attended CISPES rallies.

Primary Concern

“The primary concern here is not the existence of those names, but rather what dissemination is made of those names,” Sessions said. “I believe the FBI should take special care in dissemination of information about people whose names ended up in files merely because they attended CISPES meetings or participated in CISPES activities.”

The investigation, which was expanded to a nationwide inquiry in October, 1983, and finally cut off in June, 1985, covered CISPES’ 180 chapters and led to spinoff probes of nine other groups and 169 individuals, according to Sessions.

Responding to a suggestion by Rep. John Conyers Jr. (D-Mich.) that the FBI simply strip its files of the CISPES information, Sessions said that the Federal Records Act, the Privacy Act and rules of the National Archives bar the FBI from taking such sweeping action.

But he said the FBI is “prepared to consider very carefully” requests for specific records expungement from individuals and groups who think they may be listed in the CISPES investigation files.

While Sessions drew praise from several panel members for his internal investigation of the CISPES probe and the steps he has announced to prevent a recurrence, Rep. Don Edwards (D-San Jose), the subcommittee chairman, reminded the FBI director that the panel first raised questions about the case in 1985.

‘Taken Three Years’

“It has taken three years,” Edwards told Sessions, who became FBI director 10 months ago.

Edwards recalled that Sessions’ predecessor, William H. Webster, who now heads the CIA, told Congress in April, 1985, that the FBI was not interested in CISPES members. “This proves not to be the case,” Edwards said.

After the hearing, the American Civil Liberties Union urged Congress to bar the FBI from initiating investigations of political groups “without a clear predicate of criminal violation.”

The FBI has resisted applying such a requirement to suspected international terrorism, saying it would hamstring intelligence-gathering functions.

The CISPES investigation was initiated to determine whether the group should have registered with the government under a federal law that requires such action of groups working for foreign entities or regimes. No violation of that law was found nor were any substantial links between the group and international terrorist activities, Sessions said.