The Family Jewels (45 page)

12
. Colby Oral History, 13.

CHAPTER 2. THE FAMILY JEWELS:
THE WHITE HOUSE REACTS

1
. Dick Cheney with Liz Cheney,
In My Time: A Personal and Political Memoir
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2011), 91.

2
. Henry A. Kissinger,
Years of Renewal
(New York: Simon &
Schuster, 1999), 320. Publishing this memoir twenty-five years after the fact, Kissinger complains that “Though the headline implied otherwise, the substance of the article, in fact, related to events which had taken place in previous administrations” (310). No doubt he counted on short memories. In fact, a major element in the first Hersh article was the news (accurately reported) that the Nixon White House had initiated a project in 1970 calling for “the use of such illegal activities as burglaries and wiretapping to combat antiwar activities” (“Huge CIA Operation Reported in U.S. against Anti-War Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years,”
New York Times
, December 22, 1974, 1). Director Colby reminded Kissinger of this scheme, known as the Huston Plan, in the telephone conversation referenced below. And by noon that day,
the second day of this political controversy
, Dr. Kissinger had also been reminded by NSC aides that he had received at least two major CIA reports on the U.S. antiwar movement that, though couched as studies of possible foreign control over American political groups, had embodied plentifully detailed coverage of those American groups. Our examination in the chapter below on the CIA and domestic surveillance shows clearly that this activity peaked during Nixon's administration and not in, as Kissinger writes (p. 310), “primarily that of Lyndon Johnson.” At the time he received the first of those CIA analyses, moreover, then-director Richard Helms had explicitly told Kissinger the document was supersensitive because the underlying CIA spy operations were illegal (see
Chapter 4
).

3
. Kissinger,
Years of Renewal
, 310. Dr. Kissinger's account here is unreliable. On December 23 Kissinger sent a memorandum to Vail for Rumsfeld, cited below, that among other things contained a set of questions that could be expected to come up at news conferences, along with suggestions for how they should be answered. The
second
of these questions was “What was the ‘partial information' the President mentioned yesterday that he had about this matter?” The response Kissinger suggested on December 23, 1974, was “This reference was to
advance information that the
Times
would be carrying an article such as the one that appeared yesterday
” (our italics). On the phone with reporter Marvin Kalb on the evening of December 24, Kissinger also stated that two days before the story hit Colby had taken him aside after an arms control meeting and said the
Times
would have a CIA article in its Sunday editions. When Colby expressed the opinion the story was not accurate, Kissinger had told
him not to worry. This record puts beyond doubt the fact that the White House had advance knowledge of the Hersh article.

4
. Department of State, TELCON, Bill Colby–Henry Kissinger, December 23, 1974, 9:40 a.m. (declassified February 8, 2005; National Security Archive FOIA 200102979).

5
. White House, Cable Donald Rumsfeld–Henry Kissinger, 240307Z, December 1974 (declassified August 4, 1988), Gerald R. Ford Library, Gerald R. Ford Papers, White House Operations [unless otherwise noted, all documents cited here subsequently come from this archival source, collection series information only will be cited], Richard Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 5, folder “Colby Report.”

6
. National Security Council, Memorandum, Henry Kissinger–Donald Rumsfeld, “Public Handling of New York Times Allegations of CIA Domestic Activities,” December 23, 1974 (declassified December 23, 1992), Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 6, folder “Intelligence—General.”

7
. Department of State, TELCON, Henry Kissinger–Ted Koppel, December 23, 1974, 11:20 a.m. (declassified January 3, 2005; National Security Archive FOIA 200102979). Koppel persisted in asking about the CIA activities, and Kissinger promised to check. About an hour later aide Richard Kennedy told Kissinger that one of the CIA reports, at a minimum, had been updated to include the American group Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). There is no record of Kissinger supplying Ted Koppel any correction of his earlier assertions.

8
. Department of State, TELCON, Henry Kissinger–Marvin Kalb, 5:20 p.m., December 24, 1974 (declassified December 28, 2004; National Security Archive FOIA 200102979).

9
. Department of State, TELCON, Henry Kissinger–Barry Schweid, December 24, 1974, 3:25 p.m. (declassified December 27, 2004; National Security Archive FOIA 200102979).

10
. National Security Council, Memorandum, Henry Kissinger–Gerald R. Ford, “Colby Report,” December 25, 1974 (declassified June 20, 2003), Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 5, folder “Colby Report.” This memorandum had at least the virtue of sticking to the substance of the Colby Report. Dr. Kissinger's description of The Family Jewels in his memoirs goes far beyond the actual contents of the material. “The ‘family jewels,'
” Kissinger writes, “alleged as well assassination plots against foreign leaders during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations and touched on every aspect of covert
and paramilitary activities conducted by the American government during a twenty-five year period” (
Years of Renewal
, 313). In fact, The Family Jewels said nothing whatever about paramilitary action; its coverage of assassinations is defective (and one of the reasons why the National Security Archive decided to create a “real” Family Jewels). The original document is confined to one single narrow aspect of the subject, CIA relations with American organized crime figures; and it covers no covert operations at all except in the sense that the CIA domestic activities were carried out in secret, and thus were “covert.”

11
. “A New CIA Furor,”
Newsweek
magazine, January 6, 1975, quoted p. 10.

12
. White House Office, Richard Cheney Notes, “CIA—The Colby Report,” December 27, 1974, Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 5, folder “Colby Report.”

13
. White House, Memorandum of Conversation, President Ford–Henry Kissinger, January 4, 1975 (declassified April 20, 2000), Gerald R. Ford Library, Ford Papers, National Security Advisers' Files, Memcon series, box 8, folder “January 4, 1975: Ford–Kissinger.”

14
. Department of Justice, Office of the Deputy Attorney General, Memorandum, Lawrence H. Silberman–Gerald R. Ford, January 3, 1975 (declassified January 8, 1997), Gerald R. Ford Library, Ford Papers, Richard Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 7, folder “Meeting with Richard Helms.”

15
. White House, Memorandum of Conversation, President Ford–Richard Helms, January 4, 1975 (declassified May 5, 1999), Gerald R. Ford Library, Ford Papers, National Security Advisers' Files, Memcon series, box 8, folder “January 4, 1975: Ford–Former CIA Director Richard Helms.”

16
. Officially the President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States. Its product, the
Final Report
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1975) issued in June 1975, will be cited in several places later as “Rockefeller Report.”

17
. Chaired by Idaho Democrat Senator Frank Church, the Senate investigators would be informally known as the Church Committee, and technically as the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities of the United States (Senate [94th Cong., 2nd sess.]). The Church Committee produced several interim reports, six books of final report, and seven volumes of hearings (all Washington, DC: Government Printing Office,
1975–1976). These will be cited in various contexts in later chapters, always as “Church Committee.”

18
. The House of Representatives investigatory body was called the House Select Committee on Intelligence, initially under the chairmanship of Representative Lucien Nedzi (D-IL). Nedzi would be discredited when his prior knowledge of The Family Jewels—as related in the next chapter—became known, and the committee would be reconstituted in June under Representative Otis G. Pike (D-NY). Its report was never officially issued, though bootleg copies leaked and would appear in the press.

19
. Walter F. Mondale with David Hage,
The Good Fight: A Life in Liberal Politics
(New York: Scribner, 2010), 139.

CHAPTER 3. DOMESTIC SURVEILLANCE

1
. Church Committee,
Final Report: Book III: Supplementary Detailed Staff Reports on Intelligence Activities and the Rights of Americans
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1976), 721–723, quoted p. 723. Also see Frank Donner,
The Age of Surveillance: The Aims and Methods of America's Political Intelligence System
(New York: Random House, 1980), 272.

2
. Church Committee,
Final Report, Book III
, 723–729, quoted p. 725.

3
. Bill Richards, “CIA Infiltrated Black Groups Here in the 1960s,”
Washington Post
, March 30, 1978, A1, A3.

4
. Church Committee,
Final Report, Book III
, 681. Helms's testimony to the committee on antiwar dissent and the formation of this project was that “President Johnson was after this all the time. I don't recall any specific instructions in writing from his staff, particularly, but this was something that came up almost daily” (ibid., quoted p. 689).

5
. Stokely Carmichael with Ekwume Michael Thelwell,
Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely Carmichael (Kwame Ture)
(New York: Scribner, 2003), 636.

6
. Frank J. Rafalko,
MH/Chaos: The CIA's Campaign against the Radical New Left and the Black Panthers
(Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2011), passim.

7
. CIA, Memorandum, Thomas Karamessines–James J. Angleton, “Overseas Coverage of Subversive Student and Related Activities,” August 15, 1967, EYES ONLY (declassified April 26, 1989), Gerald
R. Ford Library, Ford Papers, White House Operations (hereafter, GRFL, GRFP, WHO), Richard Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 5, folder “Colby Report.”

8
. Richard Helms with William Hood,
A Look over My Shoulder: A Life in the Central Intelligence Agency
(New York: Random House, 2003), 279–280.

9
. Rafalko,
MH/Chaos
, 54.

10
. Confidential source.

11
. CIA, Operational Cable, Director 49260, November 2, 1967 (declassified April 26, 1989), GRFL, GRFP, WHO, Richard Cheney Files, Intelligence Series, box 5, folder “Colby Report.”

12
. CIA, Memorandum, “Distribution of OCI Paper on Student Dissidents,” September 17, 1968 (MORI 145843), declassified as part of the
Family Jewels Documents
, 2007, 173–174.

13
. CIA, “Special Information Report: Vietnam Moratorium Day, October 15, 1969,” October 1969 (declassified, MORI 18137), Texas Tech University, Vietnam Center Archive, CIA Collection, item 04112155001.

14
. CIA, “Special Information Report: Anti–Vietnam War Protest, November 1969,” and idem, “II,” November 1969 (declassified, MORI nos. 18139, 18140), Texas Tech University, Vietnam Center Archive, CIA Collection, items 04112154007 and 04112155003.

15
. Submitting a new copy of the “Restless Youth” study to the president in 1969, Helms's cover memo to Henry Kissinger contained a different warning: “This is an area not within the charter of this agency, so I need not emphasize how extremely sensitive this makes the paper” (Church Committee,
Final Report, Book III
, quoted p. 697). This puts a very different light on the language in the Helms CIA directive. In his memoirs Helms records that “Nothing in my thirty-year service brought me more criticism than my response to President Johnson's insistence.” He recounts that when LBJ brought it up, “I explained that such an investigation might risk involving the agency in a violation of the CIA charter” (
A Look over My Shoulder
, 279). Mr. Helms calls his language in the cover note to Kissinger “a similar caution in respect to the Agency charter” (281).

16
. Rockefeller Commission Report. The Helms memoir (
A Look over My Shoulder
, 281) asserts that the Chaos files were FBI, not CIA, material.

17
. Some of these files were many volumes long. Thus the Rockefeller Commission enumerated these files, but the CIA, in a June 25,
1975, letter, objected that the number of “files” was only 107 (Church Committee,
Final Report, Book III
, fn. p. 695).

18
. These and other Chaos personnel were interviewed by the Rockefeller Commission or the Church Committee. Agent numbers appear in the Rockefeller Commission report.

19
. Angus Mackenzie,
Secrets: The CIA's War at Home
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 30–34, 36–41, 55–57.

20
. CIA, “Foreign Support for Activities Planned to Disrupt or Harass the Republican Convention,” July 26, 1972 (MORI 16753), Texas Tech University, Vietnam Center Archive, CIA Collection, item 04112151002.

21
.
Congressional Record
, Extensions of Remarks, April 7, 1971, p. E2911. The entire proceedings of the Winter Soldier Investigation were inserted into the
Congressional Record
by Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield.

22
. CIA, Management Advisory Group memoranda, “CIA Domestic Activities,” March 25, 1971, and November 1971 (declassified, MORI 1451843), CIA,
Family Jewels Documents
, 439–443.

23
. Richard Helms Speeches, to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 17, 1971; and to employees, “State of the Agency,” September 17, 1971, excerpted in CIA,
Family Jewels Documents
, 445.