FBI Probes Alleged Break-in by Its Agents

The FBI on Thursday began an investigation into allegations by a longtime informer that his FBI handlers broke into the headquarters of a group in Dallas opposed to Reagan Administration policy in Central America.

The informer, Frank Varelli, contends that they wiretapped the group members’ phones and kept “terrorist” files on almost 700 people, including two U.S. senators and a former ambassador.

Varelli said in a civil suit seeking back pay from the FBI, and in a series of recent television interviews, that in 1981 he infiltrated the Dallas chapter of the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador and was told later by two FBI agents that they had broken into the group’s office to steal documents.

He also said he was asked to translate tapes of wiretapped phone calls and told to trade information with the Salvadoran national guard at a time the FBI was helping investigate national guardsmen in the murders of several Americans in El Salvador.

The FBI acknowledged in papers filed in the court case last month that it had been investigating the committee under its secret “international terrorism” guidelines.