Loeb Confirms Aid to FBI Informer

William Loeb, the conservative publisher of the Manchester, N.H., Union-Leader, confirmed yesterday that he had helped expedite payments from government agencies to Jessie L. Gill, an FBI informer who was close to Harvard SDS in the late 1960s.

The Crimson yesterday also reached Gill, who said she had offered her services to both the FBI and the Central Intelligence Agency beginning in January 1967 and had given the two agencies the names of "thousands" of radicals.

Loeb said he had "taken the appropriate steps in Washington" to insure that Gill was paid for her work. Asked whether these steps included contacting New Hampshire's two Congressmen, he responded, "I know a great many Congressmen."

No Personal Meeting

He said he never met Gill and had no idea whether she was paid by CIA agents, as she said yesterday. He said the matter was brought to his attention by a staff member and he offered his assistance.

Loeb called Gill's work as an informer "very healthy" and "a very good idea."

"In the late 1930s I penetrated the Communist Party on my own," Loeb said. "Anybody that says there is no such thing as the Communist conspiracy is crazy."

Communist Control

SDS is "by and large controlled by Communists," Loeb said.

Reached in New Hampshire, Gill readily acknowledged her role as an informer for both the FBI and the CIA. She said she was "positive" that Herman A. Mountain, chief of the CIA's Cambridge office, was one of two Agency agents who she said paid her $350 in her North Conway, N.H., home on March 3, 1972.

Mountain yesterday refused comment on any aspect of the case. He referred questions to the CIA's headquarters in Langley, Va.

Angus Thuermer, assistant to the CIA's director, yesterday declined comment on any aspect of the case. "We don't usually comment on any of our activities," he said.

Gill said the FBI had paid her steadily, although she said her salary was "under the minimum wage." She said the CIA had owed her the $350 for hundreds of phone calls she had made to the Agency officers in both Cambridge and the national headquarters.

She said she approached Loeb through Carol Morrissey, a Union-Leader correspondent, and that he helped her get her money. She said she has never met Loeb.

Gill said a letter sent by Rep. James C. Cleveland (R-N.H.) to the late J. Edgar Hoover, former FBI director, was probably sent to the wrong person. The Crimson published a letter from Hoover to Cleveland Tuesday that revealed Gill's role as an informer, and another letter from Cleveland to Loeb referring to the Hoover letter and asking if the Representative could be of further assistance was published yesterday.

The Hoover letter, dated Feb. 3, 1972, told Cleveland that Gill "was fully compensated for her services, completely reimbursed for her expenses, and no money is owed her by this Bureau."

Vincent H. Rueul, an assistant special agent in the FBI's Boston office, said Monday the letter was authentic and that Gill had been on the Bureau payroll.

Both Rueul and Jack Harrington, a spokesman for the FBI's Washington, D.C., press services, yesterday declined further comment on any aspect of the case.

Gill said yesterday Cleveland got the two agencies "mixed-up." She said further efforts were needed before the two CIA men arrived at her home March 3. She declined to discuss the nature of those efforts, and Loeb would not extensively comment on any aspect of the case other than his remark about "appropriate steps in Washington."

Gill said she had tried "for ages" to collect her money from the CIA. She said she contacted the Agency regularly to give them "foreign stuff, stuff that would dribble in about groups like the Committee on Latin American Solidarity and Al Fatah."

She said the CIA also liked to be kept informed about the activities of Cambridge radicals because it feared for the safety of its Cambridge office. The Crimson was unable to locate the Agency's office here yesterday, and Mountain declined Tuesday to specify its location.

Gill said she first approached the FBI in early 1967 after talking to some "personal friends of mine in the CIA." She declined to reveal where she met her CIA friends.

Gill said she provided the FBI with "any information that threatened city, personal or national security." She declined to reveal the names of her contacts at either intelligence organization. She said she "worked alone" in the field, and she declined to discuss her method of operation.

She said she attended various national radical actions for the Bureau, including two moratoriums in Washington, D.C. She added she had access to national SDS records at one point, and said she was on the executive committee of Harvard SDS until 1969.

The FBI directed her to "oscillate between the two factions" in SDS after that organization split in its 1969 convention, Gill said. She found the oscillation difficult and added, "The Bureau moved me from Cambridge in September 1970."

Gill complained of her treatment by both security agencies. She said the FBI "never paid me adequately," and that Mountain, the CIA's Cambridge chief, was "a clown who forced several people to leave that office" because of his incompetence.

She said the FBI failed to find her a new job after she lost her old one in April 1967 for what she termed her radical activities. She declined to reveal where whe worked prior to that date.

Gill concluded that both agencies are doing a "shoddy" job of gathering intelligence on the domestic front