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Unfortunately, however, the former Inspector attributed to Barnes is contained in a memorandum which General of CIA has no recollection of such a memorandum The only piec'e of evidence that can be or of other repositories within CIA pro- he wrote more than two years after the fact, concerning briefing. 81/ coming from Mr. Barnes -- nor do the records of his former office vide any such memorandum that Barnes miqht have written, either at that time or later, concerning the Stevenson comments which appearea in Wise and Ross's book, The Invisible Government. With reference to the book's relation of the Stevenson episode, Barnes wrote: I can best provide an answer by first giving a brief statement of what, in fact, occurred. I would like to say that my entire statement is based on my recol- lection, without having reviewed documents or other evidence, so I would not like to be held to the accuracy of. minute details without a further check. Generally speak- ing, however, I know it to be correct ••• . , The rash of publicity, however, much of it inaccurate, plus the presence of Roa in New York, with the threat of a UN pres- entation, made it seem advisable to provide stevenson with an up-to-date bri~fing of the exact status of the operation. Con- sequently~ such a briefing was arranged for Saturday~ 8 April '[1961]~ and I ~as chosen to give it. In addition to steven- son~ Arthur Schlesinger was present as were a number of Stevenson's staff, including - 241 -