CIA Cites Errors in Guatemala Case : Probe: Agency says no one should be fired even though it failed to tell Congress of its ties to a man implicated in the murders of two people.

A CIA investigation of its controversial involvement in Guatemala has determined that officials failed to inform Congress of the agency’s links to a Guatemalan army officer implicated in the murders of an American citizen and the husband of an American woman.

The report recommended that no CIA employees should be fired as a result.

The investigation by the CIA’s inspector general swiftly drew criticism Wednesday on Capitol Hill as lawmakers, who were briefed in closed sessions, disagreed with the agency’s findings that the failure to inform Congress for more than three years was inadvertent.

The CIA report, which offers only a mild rebuke to the agency, also concluded that intelligence officers operating in Guatemala broke no U.S. laws, were not involved in either of the two killings, and that the agency operated within its legal authority in that country.

Still, the report concluded that CIA officials not only failed to inform Congress, but also kept vital information from CIA analysts and two successive U.S. ambassadors to Guatemala, raising troubling questions about relations between the agency and the State Department.

“The investigation determined that the agency did not meet its responsibilities to keep the congressional intelligence oversight committees fully and currently informed,” said a declassified summary of the report released late Wednesday.

The report blames “management inattention” for the failure to notify Congress, even when such disclosures were called for during regular reports on human rights abuses that the agency gives lawmakers.

The report stressed that “no evidence has been found to indicate that any agency personnel advocated not notifying Congress . . . [that] no satisfactory explanation has been provided as to why the committees were not notified, [but that] those involved state it was forgotten in the course of events when no one took clear responsibility to ensure it was done.” Still, senior CIA officials, speaking with reporters immediately following a closed session on the issue with the Senate Intelligence Committee, acknowledged that lawmakers “disagree with our view on the fact that the failure to disclose this information was inadvertent.”

Agency officials say that CIA Director John M. Deutch has not yet decided what punishment to mete out to employees involved in the controversy.

The CIA’s internal probe was only one of at least six investigations in Congress and the executive branch that have begun since revelations in March that the agency kept a Guatemalan army officer on its payroll even after it discovered that he had been implicated in the 1990 death of Michael DeVine, an American innkeeper, and the 1992 torture-killing of Efrain Bamaca Valasquez, the Guatemalan husband of American lawyer Jennifer Harbury.

Other probes, still under way by the State Department, Pentagon, Justice Department and the House and Senate intelligence panels, may come down more harshly on the agency’s activities.

In a separate statement issued Wednesday, the White House’s Intelligence Oversight Board seemed to take issue with one crucial finding of the CIA report that downplayed evidence of direct involvement in the two killings by a Guatemalan army officer on the agency’s payroll.

That issue is critical for the agency, since much of the controversy surrounding the case has developed because of the charges that the CIA was working closely with a man involved with human rights abuses.

The CIA investigators’ findings raise questions about the reports the agency received that Guatemalan army Col. Julio Roberto Alpirez, who was a paid source of the agency, was directly implicated in the murders.

In October, 1991, a CIA case officer received a report from a source saying that, during an all-night drinking bout, Alpirez had said he had been present during the interrogation of DeVine that ended in DeVine’s death. But when questioned by the CIA inspector’s investigators, the case officer backed off his own report, saying he had written it from memory and could not recall having been told of Alpirez’s involvement.

The CIA also had only one “fourth-hand” report that Alpirez was responsible for killing Bamaca, while other information it has received suggests that Bamaca was still alive after being interrogated by Alpirez.

The information implicating Alpirez in the Bamaca killing was “hearsay on hearsay on hearsay, and I wouldn’t swear out a warrant for a traffic ticket in Fairfax County [a Washington suburban area] based on this information,” one CIA official said.

Yet the oversight board stated that “no credible evidence obtained to date” contradicts charges that Alpirez was involved. CIA officials acknowledged Wednesday that they don’t know for sure the extent of Alpirez’s involvement, and said they attempted but failed to interview Alpirez for their investigation.

Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee who sparked the controversy by revealing the CIA’s links to Alpirez, warned that Deutch should not accept the inspector general’s recommendation against firing anyone as a result of the Guatemalan affair.

Torricelli argued that “there was a clear violation of the law in not notifying Congress” about the agency’s involvement. And he added that Deutch should consider the fate that befell former CIA Director R. James Woolsey, who was forced to resign in December after failing to impose stiff punishments on CIA personnel in the wake of the Aldrich H. Ames spy scandal.

“I think Mr. Deutch would be wise to remember the experience of Mr. Woolsey,” Torricelli said. “An admission that CIA officers lied to ambassadors and failed to inform Congress--and then to say this is of no consequence to the careers of CIA officers--would be a mistake. It would contribute to the loss of confidence in the agency in Congress.”