◆ SpookStack

• - • . - Approved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4 - 53 - IV. CONCLUSIOli The East Coast Project would now be illegal, and the Department would not hesitate to prosecute those who participated in such a program in the future. The applicable law has not always been so clear, however, so that a prose- cution brought now for a course of conduct that spanned 1953 to 1973 might be unfair to defendants who believed that the program they were conducting began with presidential authorization·and continued with this assumed authority. Finally, because of difficulties of proof that have been bro ht about by the lack of written documentation. the lapse of time, the fading of memories, and the deathsof key participants, the Department does not believe it could prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the potential defendants are criminally responsible for their participation in the mail opening program. Questions of the legality of intelligence methods and of the scope and exercise of the national security power did not reach the courts until this decade. The preceding sections of this report have described the development. primarily in the last ten years, of Fourth Amendment law governing the use by the Executive Branch of surveillance that invades privacy, and the principles that the Department believes now govern its scope and exercise. But whatever can be said about the law now, . . A roved For Release 2008/11/06: CIA-RDP04M01816R000502010009-4