Mr. Hoover. It is a very necessary thing, because the intelligence agency of many of these foreign countries will cover the whole world and the country itself. Whereas in this country you have separate agencies covering espionage activities. CIA covers the foreign activity, and the FBI the domestic activities, and they must be interlocking. An espionage agent of the Soviet Government can arrive in New York today by plane from Paris and he can be in Mexico City tomorrow. Then, CIA would pick him up there. We would not pick him up there. We would watch him while in this country, but as soon as he takes that plane and leaves the United States CIA moves in on him. If he comes back to the United States, we move in on him. Therefore, we have a very close liaison.
As a matter of fact, what we have done in government agencies is to have a liaison agent in our Bureau assigned to contact CIA, the Pentagon, State Department, and various other agencies to cut out the red tape of writing letters back and forth. In order to orally relay information which has come to his attention, our representative can immediately phone it over to the FBI, and if there is need, for instance, to meet a plane coming in to New York or a boat that is docking at New York, it is all accomplished within a matter of 45 minutes or an hour.
If you went through this letter-writing process and the paper war that goes on so often in the Government it might take a week or 10 days.
The FBI does have 10 legal attaches attached to 10 embassies abroad. Their purpose is not operational. They don't investigate in those countries any matters that have to be investigated. That, if it is to be done, is handled by CIA. Our purpose in being there is to maintain liaison with our opposite number such as the Surete Nationale in France and with the national police in the Philippines, to exchange information that is vital to our internal security, and also vital to the internal security of the other country.
Senator Cooper. May I ask one other question?
Is there any, considering the number of defectors in the United States to Communist countries, which cannot be large, I would assume——
Mr. Hoover. I think there are about 36.
Senator Cooper. Which would indicate, I would think either a lack of reliability on their part and stability or beyond that a dedicated purpose to become Communists, then upon their return, wouldn't it seem to you they should be given some special attention?
Mr. Hoover. We have now——
Senator Cooper. To determine whether they are a risk to become Soviet or Communist espionage agents or in fact become dangerous?