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WATIGNAL AFFAIRS . President ordered az.end to the sone thaf hav: kept tie price of domestic “old oil” —gened@ ly from wells in operation before 1973—at an artificially low $5.25 * per barrel. Insiead of the immediate and total decontrol he had once envisioned, however, Ford proposed a gradual phas- ing out of price controls over the next two and a half years. Eventually, all old oil— about 6 per cent of domestic produc- tion—would join “new oil” in following the world market price But Ford con- ceded that there should be some limit: _ he proposed a domestic ceiling of $13.50 per barrel. Ripples: Ford's concessions on the question of a ceiling and on the need for gradua! decontrol hinted plainly at com- promise and thus were probably the most significant parts of his : order, but critics preferredto , focus initially on the plan's specific economic impact The President said only that _ his proposal would add | cent to the price of each gallon of gasoline during the rst year and a total of 7 cents in 30 months. But con- sumer advocate Ralph Nader warned of a_ far-reaching “ripple effect’ inflating the economy. Some experts in Congress cited a computer projection warning that 800,000 more Americans vo would be unemployed, the Is gross national == product Wy would be cut by $40 billion and consumer prices would he raised by 3.2 per cent. Despite last-minute ma- neuvering, Ford apparently y couldn't raise enough sup- port to keep Congress from t iing his decontrol plan this week. But he did have the votes to sustain his veto of a “tS bill passed last week that would tighten controls on old oil and roll back new-oil prices to $11.28 per barrel. , Ford also pledged to veto a - backup plan for,simply ex- ; tending current controls to March 1. To avoid the instant skyrocketing of prices, how- ever, both sides may well agree toa briefer extension. That would provide time for a more comprehensive compromise, and some of its features already seemed plain. One key House committee was considering a phased decontrol of oil. similar to Ford's plan but with a lower ceiling price. A consensus was also building on some sort of windfall-profits tax for oi] compa- nies, mandatory mileage standards for new automobiles, the creation ofa strate- gic oi] reserve—and a muoltimillion- dollar trust fund to help find new ways of keeping up with the nation's need for energy. —DAVID M. ALPERN with HENFY W. HUBBARD and THOMAS MM. DeFRANK in Washington 2 foe oe i a aS “ a 4 hee Surprised by Soviet official, the * The FBI's ‘Blaék-Bag Boys’ Every foreign intelligence agent had suspected it and ecery major mafioso had known for sure, but last week director Clarence Kelley made it official: the FBI, he reported, has in the past made “sur- reptitious entries” into various places. foreign embassies included, to obtain what it felt was important information. Kelley said the break-ins began during World War Il and were largely discontin- ued by J. Edgar Hoover in 1966, and he implied they were legal because the agents “acted in good faith.” But the disclosure touched off a major furor: Attorney General Edward Levi promised acriminal investigation, several foreign , Zo ph? fot ambassadors called the White House to learn whether they had been targets, and Presidential counsel Philiz Buchen be- rated Levi for not keeping Kelley “on a shorter leash.” Most intriguingly, the director's disclosure also set other tongues wagging. NEWSWEEK'S Antho- ny Marro pieced together this storyofthe FBI's gfter-hours adventure a . red T* FBI agents usually went in clean: # no badge, no guns, no credentials, Almost always they wore the standard uniform of suit and tie, but with lubels and cleanerY’ marking moved. “It was your ass if you got caught,” recalled a Rrewiess b> Stan Mentiet Tageey apes te work i former agent who said he had taken part in many break-ins. “You were told, ‘If you get caught, you're on your own’.” They were known as “black-bag teams” or “black-bag boys” and they usually consisted—at a minimum—of a lock- smith, a lookout and a couple of men to do the ransacking. Depending on the purpose of the break-in, one of them would know how to use a camera or install a bug. Sometimes a “slugger” was sent along to intercept unexpected visi- tors. “We had guys who, ifthey went bad, would be the best second-story men in the world,” boasted one former agent. Over the years, a Justice Department official told NEWSWEEK'S Stephan Lesher, the FBI conducted about 1,500 break-ins of foreign embas- sies and missions, mob hang- ‘outs and the headquarters of such extremist groups as the Ku Klux Klan and the Ameri- can Communist Party. Em- bassy break-ins, averaging one a month by one estimate, were usually staged to get information that could help the National Security Agen- cy break foreign codes. Bugs: One top source said last week that he never knew of a case in which the FBI planted a bug in an embassy; if the code were cracked, no bug would be needed anv- way and, besides, a diplo- matic bug was almost sure to be found. But break-ins against organized-crime fig- -ures and U.S. Communists were almost always to plant bugs. “They had bugs in mob apartments all over New - York,” said one government investigator. A break-in at a mob office in Brooklyn, for example, might employ only a lookout, a driver for a getaway car and a couple of agents. But a break-in at a major embassy or mission would require not only a skilled team, but doz- ens of agents to fan out across the city-and watch all of the 50 to 60 persons known to have kevs to the uilding. The agents who entered usual- ly would take in sensitive cameras (capa- ble of taking pictures without a flash) and smal! copying machines that could be folded into a suitcase. "They wouldn't j said one FBI source. y everything in sight.” nts would photograph the coding machine from every possible angle, then copy messages and replace the originals. The idea was that the National Security Agency would have intercepted incom- ing coded messages and the FBI would have decoded copies. That, plus the