Hope Hearst Investigation Concluded; Bobby Fluegel Recovers

Hope Hearst's confrontation of Agent Pipe on Day 32 of the time period under consideration led, indirectly, to the chartering of this Commission. Hearst, as CIA learned at this point via Agent Pipe, was actually an FBI informant. Furthermore, although she had yet to begin her training at the FBI Academy, she had recently been recruited to join the Bureau. She was offered the opportunity to enter FBI on a Special Agent track, given her graduate education and her previous exemplary service in CIA's Operation Shift Lock.

It was determined later that her contact with supposedly subversive writers was not actually due to her monitoring these writers for FBI, however. She was in contact with them only to further her essentially apolitical interest in the written word, which she intended to continue to nurture even as she began her new career. She not had agreed to join FBI to monitor subversive writers, and had not filed any reports or provided any information about the individuals CIA considered suspect. Hearst's true interest in joining FBI was to investigate abuses of U.S. intelligence organization authority, abuses "of exactly this sort," as she later wrote in her report about the Day 32 incident. It was this report that brought the seriousness of the Operation Shift Lock aftermath to the attention of FBI and first raised concerns that led to the chartering of this commission.

The events that occurred during this incident are determined from reconciling the report of Hope Hearst to FBI and the report of Agent Pipe to CIA.

After pinning Agent Pipe to the roof of his car and disarming him, Hope Hearst explained her FBI affiliation and then told him, correctly, that he was acting illegally by surveilling her. She released him and allowed him to re-enter his vehicle. She told him the name and phone number of the individual he could contact at FBI to verify her affiliation. Agent Pipe maintained that although he was indeed CIA staff, he was on the street incidentally. He said he was not interesting in contacting FBI, and that she should return his weapon to him immediately or face arrest. Hearst said she would give his weapon to her FBI contact, who, unlike Agent Pipe, was a law enforcement officer, and Agent Pipe could claim it from that individual at a later time.

Hope Hearst then went into Carol Bly's house, taking Agent Pipe's weapon with her, and called her FBI contact herself to report the situation. Agent Pipe waited outside until Hearst's FBI contact arrived. The FBI contact learned from a brief conversation with Agent Pipe that Gus Fortan was in charge of the surveillance of Hearst, and he returned Agent Pipe's weapon and allowed Agent Pipe to leave.

Once the monitoring of U.S. citizens within the United States by CIA came to the attention of high-level official at FBI, Gus Fortan was instructed by CIA officials at the highest level to immediately cease his investigation. The matter was clearly one of counterintelligence on U.S. soil, and Fluegel was not CIA staff, so FBI had clear jurisdiction over the matter and it was appropriate at this time (as it would have been much earlier) for that organization to take up the investigation.

FBI was appraised of the situation involving Ed Fluegel. FBI agreed that, in the case of Fluegel, a genuine security threat remained, and an investigation, by FBI, should be undertaken. They took up the investigation on Day 34 of the time period under consideration, and told Fortan that they would contact him if there was any further need for his involvement.

Meanwhile, Bobby Fluegel, the younger brother of missing civilian code-talker Ed Fluegel, had been evincing a swift recovery after being restored to the care of his father Cecil Fluegel.

Although Bobby Fluegel had shown no improvement during his impatient care at the University of California San Francisco, he began to speak more and more normally after he was returned to his old room in his father's domicile. Over the course of only a few days, he recovered the ability to speak words and phrases that were not direct quotes from commercials, which his speech had been limited to for many months. Physicians at the University of California San Francisco were mostly very pleased at his recovery, although they were unable to determine what had caused his original ailment, and were equally puzzled about what might have remedied it. By Day 37 of the time period under consideration, the signs of his unusual trade-name aphasia could no longer be discerned. (see attatched transcripts, Traumleser report)

Both Cecil Fluegel and Bobby Fluegel had denied any knowledge of Ed Fluegel's whereabouts. FBI hoped that, if the two family members were concealing Ed Fluegel's whereabouts, this would come to light. They further thought that if Ed Fluegel was in close enough contact that he might learn of Bobby's Fluegel's recovery, Ed Fluegel might reappear and visit his brother.

FBI surveillance of Cecil Fluegel's residence, office, and telephone and computer activity was therefore undertaken. Appropriate issuance of search warrants was, at this point, finally made for the needed telecommunications monitoring. No evidence indicating Ed Fluegel's whereabouts was uncovered, however.

Since Gus Fortan had the most detailed knowledge of the Ed Fluegel affair, and had evinced some willingness to cooperate with FBI, he was asked to FBI to question Bobby Fluegel by phone.

Hyperzaft Pharmaceuticals, Internal Memo