MR. HARWOOD: I talked to a Republican strategist yesterday, he said if the election for the House was held right now, we’d not only lose the House, we’d be down 10 seats. But one advantage the Republicans have, $44 million dollars of cash at the Republican National Committee; they’re going to be well-funded. And down the stretch, they think they may have an advantage there.

MS. WOODRUFF: Democrats already worried about what it means if they only win one House, then they’re going to have to do something. And what are, what are they going to do? And it’s interesting that that’s already the worry.

MR. RUSSERT: Some Democrats saying, “Maybe it’s better if we don’t win, that way we can have the issues.” Enough, enough, enough. To be continued. Thank you, all.

We’ll be right back. Our MEET THE PRESS MINUTE from 31 years ago. The director of the CIA talking about, what else, domestic surveillance. He was right here on MEET THE PRESS.

(Announcements)

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MR. RUSSERT: And we are back. In the 1970s, several government investigations and commissions were very critical of the CIA. On June 29^th, 1975, CIA director William Colby appeared on MEET THE PRESS to answer those charges.

(Videotape, June 29, 1975):

MR. LESLIE H. GELB: In the wake of the disclosures about CIA collection of 10,000 or more dossiers of bugging and surveillance and whatnot, you did not refer to these activities as illegal, in fact you said they were not illegal, they were mere missteps.

MR. COLBY: I have said that they were wrong. I think “wrong” is a word that covers the—those few missteps and misdeeds that CIA has conducted over 28 years.

MR. GELB: Does “wrong” mean illegal? Does “wrong” mean illegal?

MR. COLBY: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it merely means that we were outside our charter, although there’s nothing otherwise illegal about the activity.

MR. GELB: Does “outside the charter” mean that it was illegal?

MR. COLBY: It means that it is wrong for CIA to do it.

MR. GELB: Well, was it illegal for the...

MR. COLBY: It was not necessarily a crime that it be done, but it was wrong for CIA to do it.

MR. FORD ROWAN: I’d like to ask you something about, not the CIA, which you administer, but in your role as director of Central Intelligence, you oversee the entire intelligence community, and I would like to ask you if the National Security Agency regularly monitors telephone calls between foreign—between American citizens and citizens in foreign countries.

MR. COLBY: I think the National Security Agency’s activities are, are known to include the, the following of foreign communications. I think that’s all I would like to say about that.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT: Clearly a man who understood the words “plausible deniability.”

We’ll be right back.

(Announcements)

MR. RUSSERT: Stay with NBC News for live coverage of the president’s address to the nation on immigration tomorrow evening. Brian Williams anchors our coverage at 8 p.m. Eastern.

That’s all for today. We’ll be back next week. If it’s Sunday, it’s MEET THE PRESS. The Buffalo Sabres keep winning, but enough of that, today is the day all about mothers. Happy Mother’s Day.

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