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Approved For Release 2008/11/06 : CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4 40 C. The Defense of Mistake. Suppose, however, that it were concluded that present Fourth Amendment standards equitably could be applied to the.. East Coast Project, and that under those standards the author- izations -- if any there were -- would be insu£ficient to justify the lengthy and deeply intrusive program that was actually carried out. The trial court, and the jury, then would be required to determine whether the defendants made a mistake, either of fact or of law, sufficient to make them not culpable for violation of 18 U.S.C.§1702. Mistake of fact generally is recognized as a defense in criminal cases; mistake of law is not. The present case would present both kinds of defenses -- mistake of fact to the extent the defendants reasonably believed there was presidential authorization for the East Coast Project, if in fact there was none; and mistake of law to the extent the defendants reasonably believed that the authorization was legally sufficient, if in law it was not. The mistake of fact defense might not have to be raised by the defendants, since under the circumstances of this case the prosecution would have difficulty establishing that no authorization in fact existed. Because of the age of the evi- dence, the deaths of important participants in the .events and · the striving f?r "plausible deniability" that led to an absence of written records, the prosecution would be unable to prove A roved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4