WASHINGTON - The last serious congressional panel dealing with internal subversion and terrorism, known as the internal security unit of the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Laws and Procedures, has ben dismantled by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-Mass.). Ironically, the unit has just released an explosive 179 page report that shows that the United States has suffered an almost total collapse of its internal security apparatus. Kennedy's action will certainly aggravate this disastrous state of affairs.

Kennedy's move can be interpreted as a direct slap-in-the-face to the retiring chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. James Eastland (D-Miss.), who was also acting chairman of the Criminal Laws and Procedures Subcommittee. Without formally assuming chairmanship of Judiciary and despite indications that both Democrats and republicans want Judiciary to maintain an internal security function, Kennedy disbanded the unit.

At present, therefore, the Congress has no unit which could carry on such work. The panel abolished by Kennedy included staff members formerly with the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, which was itself abolished in 1977. The only other Congressional panel dealing with the matter was the House Committee on Un-American Activities. It was eliminated in 1975.

The conclusions and evidence contained in the final report of this unit, however, make it clear that such a panel is urgently needed. Prepared under the direction of Sen. Eastland, it maintains that freedom of information and privacy legislation, an anti-intelligence hysteria, restrictions on surveillance, and legal actions directed against police agencies by left-wing groups are moving the U.S. into the status of a "zero security" society.

Sen. Eastland points to the Hanafi Muslim siege of Washington D.C. a few years ago as an example of what can happen. He notes that at one time the Washington police had an informant in the Hanafi Muslims as well as files on their membership and activities. But then, the Washington D.C. city council ordered the destruction of the police intelligence unit, destruction of its files, and an end to the use of informants in extremist organizations. "Stripped of intelligence capabilities," Eastland said, "there was absolutely no way in which the Washington police would have foreseen the incident or could have acted to prevent it." The result: one dead, one paralyzed for life, and hundreds more who wen5t through severe psychological traumas.

One section of the report titled "The role of the Media" highlights what is described as the "adverse effects which the generally negative attitude of the media are having on law enforcement." Mr. Glen King, Executive Director of the International Association of chiefs of Police, told the subcommittee that the press can often demoralize an agency by subjecting it to harassing and invalid charges. He also said that press leaks concerning ongoing intelligence operations, whether true or false, can jeopardize the effectiveness of a surveillance program.

Eastland himself also complains about the media. In the introduction to the report, he noted that the press had displayed "an apparent indifference both to our hearings and to the entire subject of the erosion of law enforcement intelligence." He expressed the hope that things would change. He praised a recent article in The Washington Star on how criminals are using the Freedom of Information Act for illegal ends. He also lauded the Wall Street Journal for telling how the Privacy Act has hurt the FBI's war on Crime.

Sen. Eastland's criticism of overall media indifference to these serious problems was bourne out by media reaction to his final report and to the untimely throttling of the last remaining internal security investigative body in Congress. Big media totally ignored both. I doubt very much if the great majority of the voters would approve Ted Kennedy's action in further weakening our internal security. But they don't know what has happened because most of the media have refused to tell them. Those who do know should let Sen. Kennedy and their own senators know how they feel about this.

Reed Irvine can be reached at ri@AIM.org.