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2. Intelligence, Surveillance and Spies: One Family's Ordeal
3. The Intelligence Community, In Brief
4. Intelligence Community's Secret Surveillance Network
Foreword: In 1975 while living in San Antonio, Texas, and working at Southwest Research Institute(SwRI), the author started encountering sporadic, physical surveillance in the workplace and on business trips. In early 1976, the next year, the author was contacted by a CIA officer who was operating out of an agency office in Austin, Texas, and asked to assist them in recruiting a foreign national as a spy. (While the author was employed there over the period 1964 to 1978, SwRI performed a lot of classified work for the CIA.) On the day of the first visit of the CIA officer to the author's home, the author and his family members were placed under continuous surveillance. As of this update, the surveillance is still in progress but at a level below earlier years. In 1978, after concluding that this illegal surveillance was not going to stop, the author started sending letters of complaint to high level officials of the U.S. government. One such letter is the following, which was sent to the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Signed Originally: William Albert Hewgley
August 15, 2000
A. Reprinted Letter Without Attachments
November 26, 1984
To:
Representative Edward P. Boland, Chairman
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
2426 Rayburn Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20515
From:
William A. Hewgley
1512 Shady Lane
Kingston, Tennessee 37763
Dear Mr. Boland:
Thank you for your letter of November 7, 1984, which was in reply to my letters to you dated August 11, 1984 and September 18, 1984.
Inasmuch as your initial inquiries to the CIA and FBI (Author's Note: At this time, William J. Casey was the Director of the CIA and William H. Webster was the Director of the FBI) were not productive, I will provide sufficient information below which should enable you to retrieve the proper covert operational files for your use. Some of the information below is confidential but you are cleared for such information and require it in order to conduct a review of my allegations. My copies of this letter will be kept in a safe deposit box for safeguarding.
After phoning me on February 17, 1976 for an appointment, Mr. Jack Kuehn of the CIA Austin, Texas office visited me in my San Antonio home on February 23, 1976. (Author's Note: On this date, Gerald R. Ford was President, George H.W. Bush was Director of the CIA, and Clarence Kelley was the Director of the FBI.) Concurrent with his visit, surveillance of my family started; it has never ceased since that point. Mr. Kuehn exhibited his CIA credentials, gave me his business card (Attachment 1) and briefed me on the purpose of his visit. The gist of it was this: The CIA was interested in Mr. Nam Ho, a South Korean nuclear engineer who had recently come to Southwest Research Institute to stay approximately 10 months. Mr. Ho was in the United States on an IAEA fellowship, and his objective was to become trained in quality assurance as applied to nuclear reactors. He was assigned to my group to receive this training. Mr. Kuehn debriefed me on what I knew about Mr. Ho and recorded the session with his tape recorder. Attachment 2 is a copy of the notes I took immediately following our session.
In subsequent discussions via phone, I was told by Mr. Kuehn that the CIA wished me to introduce Mr. Ho to them, so that they could initiate an agent recruitment process. I learned that the CIA hoped that Mr. Ho would eventually be in position to provide information to them on the nuclear weapons capability of South Korea.
On April 15, 1976, Mr. Kuehn again visited my home and brought with him Mr. Anthony M. Landels, a CIA agent with a cover of Associate with a CIA cover firm named Norbeck. Attachment 3 is a copy of the business card Mr. Landels provided me. (Later, Mr. Kuehn informed me that the Landels name may or may not be the agent's real name.) Also, later I was told by Mr. Kuehn that the FBI had been notified about the CIA's interest in Mr. Ho.
Subsequently, a meeting was arranged, with Mr. Ho, Mr. Landels, and me in attendance. Mr. Landels proceeded with the recruitment process from that point and I had no further contacts with him thereafter. Later, however, while reading Mr. Ho's final report, dated December 27, 1976, I realized that not only had the recruitment process proceeded but that Mr. Ho had blown the cover of the various participants involved in the recruitment process (see Attachment 4).
A couple of events occurred during the 10 months stay of Mr. Ho which suggested that he was either an agent of South Korea (KCIA) or a double agent involving South Korea and North Korea. It is not appropriate for me to go into the details of this in this letter, but it is significant that my family was subjected to the heaviest level of surveillance during the period of Mr. Ho's stay in San Antonio.
The surveillance was overwhelming to us, and we had great difficulty in coping with it. Beginning on February 23, 1976, it took on the appearance of a protective umbrella. Later, it was to become vicious, taking on the appearance of punitive, political surveillance.
After the initial visit of Mr. Kuehn, our neighborhood in San Antonio overnight became a CIA/ FBI covert operations center. Neighbors, as well as others, became involved in watching us. Surveillance networks were established at Southwest Research Institute where I worked; at the John Marshall High School where William Allen, my son, attended; at Pat Neff Middle School where Robert Andrew, my other son, attended; at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church where our family attended church; and so on. We were being protected, so we thought, and the CIA and FBI helpers engaged in the operations were, in their mind, doing their country a service by conducting surveillance on us.
On February 12, 1978, one of my sons and I went into the attic of our San Antonio home to search for eavesdropping devices. We had been aware from the first days of the surveillance that every word we uttered in our home was being received by the CIA and FBI. This had been so distressing to us that we decided that we must find and disable the devices.
That day we discovered an eavesdropping system in the attic and were able to pinpoint the specific wire used as an antenna. Microphone pickups had been installed in the living room ceiling, in a hallway partition, in a partition between the master bedroom and William Allen's bedroom, and in the partition of my wife's and my bathroom. I cut the cables to disable them, prepared diagrams of the installation, and took photographs. From that date on, we were subjected to a higher level of intimidation and we realized for the first time how very vulnerable our family was. We could be killed and no relative or friend would know that we had ever been involved in this terrible surveillance nightmare. This realization, as well as health problems caused by the surveillance, prompted me on March 4, 1978 to send my first letter to the executive branch of the Federal government (see letter from me to Admiral Stansfield Turner, dated March 4, 1978).(Author's Note: On this date, Stansfield Turner was the Director of the CIA.)
Who were the participants in the surveillance described above? We have evidence that the prime participants were the CIA and FBI. We are aware that part of the time military covert agents were also participating, probably as part of a multi-agency anti-terrorist training program. We can identify scores of participants-- give their names, addresses, describe their roles in the surveillance, dates, etc. Also, I have recordings of license plates of vehicles employed in the surveillance. Finally, I have photographic coverage of certain facets of the surveillance.
The above describes only a fraction of the surveillance which took place in San Antonio during the period February 1976 to March 1978. There is much more to report for the period March 1978 to date, but that is beyond the scope of this letter. As mentioned in the introduction, I hope by providing you with this information that you will be able to successfully ferret out the CIA and FBI operational files for this covert operation.
In closing, I would like to suggest that I come to Washington to discuss this matter in more detail. I would bring representative evidence collected to date, as well as summary level evidence, so you could receive the substance of my allegations. I am available to come up anytime. Please advise as to a suitable time and place for this meeting.
Also enclosed (Attachment 5) is biographical data giving background information on each member of our family. I thought you might wish to know more about us in view of the serious charges we have made.
We greatly appreciate your efforts on this matter.
Very truly yours,
William A. Hewgley (Signed)
William A. Hewgley (Typed)
WAH/ cph
Attachments (5)
B. Letter Mailing Verification
1. Letter was mailed at the U.S.P.O. in Kingston, Tennessee on November 26, 1984 under Registered Number 269-295-647, dated November 26, 1984. A Return Receipt (PS Form 3811, Dec.1980) was submitted with the letter.
2. On November 30, 1984, the Return Receipt was received by the author. It had been properly signed and dated November 28, 1984 at the point of delivery.
C. Reply from the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
No reply was ever received.
D. CIA Vetting
A copy of the above letter in its entirety was vetted by the Central Intelligence Agency prior to my publication of it on the world wide web.
E. Letter Under Oath
During a legal proceeding held in the late 1980s, this complete letter, including attachments, was entered into evidence under oath by the author.
This website is maintained by:
William Albert Hewgley
318 Shady Lane
Kingston, Tennessee 37763
Phone and Fax: 865-376-4169
Personal Data:
Click here for personal data on the author.
This is website https://www.angelfire.com/ca6/bolandletters/index.html
Latest Update: February 15, 2010
