CIA

Last week's disclosure of the Central Intelligence Agency's extensive financial interests, not to mention the duties it required of the recipients of its largesse, again confirm the suspicion that the agency's free-wheeling functions should be curtailed.

For several years, it has been common knowledge that the C.I.A. has made foreign policy decisions in areas where it has no business. But few people imagined the extent of the agency's penetration into reputable, non-government groups like the National Student Association.

More than 130 years ago, DeTocqueville observed that the tendency of Americans to form voluntary associations was one of the strengths of our democracy. Yet the value of such groups, as well as the opinion of them held abroad, is severely undercut if government agencies operating in the dark even appear to have a chance to control them.

Some of the C.I.A.'s motives are easily understood. They wanted the students representing the United States in various international youth festivals to include a sizable proportion of non-Communists. But since student politicians tended to be critical of U.S. foreign policy without being Communist, it would have been difficult to persuade Congress to authorize the State Department's giving them the financial support they apparently needed.

But for all the experience the C.I.A. has had in fomenting revolution and penetrating governments abroad, it obviously lacked the understanding of political relationships in this country to realize that sooner or later its operations would be disclosed. As a result, American students traveling abroad, the international operations of every group from the Newspaper Guild to the Y.W.C.A., will be suspect.

The incidents of the past few years--the Bay of Pigs in 1961 and now the N.S.A. disclosure--illustrate all too vividly that the C.I.A. has obtained more discretion in its activities than it deserves--or requires. With a full Congressional investigation and a clarification of the statutes limiting its authority, the C.I.A. might be induced to conduct itself with a little more intelligence.