FBI Claims It Does Not Seek Student Clubs

F.B.I. agent Galen N. Willis vigorously denied yesterday that the Burean would ever specifically ask for a man's college record. This statement was an abrupt refutation of Associate Dean Watson's claim last Wednesday that the F.B.I. had asked for such-information.

According to Watson, bureau agents have asked him whether certain students and graduates belonged to progressive or liberal groups while here, but he maintained that the University never gives out this information.

"We don't care what an undergraduate thinks," Willis said. He emphasized that the F.B.I. is not a police bureau to suppress thought. If colleges want to give up information about students, he added, it's their privilege. He also commented that Yale has "been cooperative" with the Bureau.

Willis claimed further that the F.B.I. can get all the information it needs by looking at college yearbooks, which normally list all of an undergraduate's clubs. Watson, however, said that most students do not put down the names of clubs which might be considered leftist or subversive.

Armed services intelligence men have also asked the University for lists of a students' extracurricular activities, Watson said Wednesday.