The Family Jewels (7 page)

There were other reports too. The key one was the September 1968 OCI paper “Restless Youth.” A CIA note covering this paper openly admitted to its sensitivity, “because of its subject matter, because of the likelihood that public exposure of the Agency's interest in the problem of student dissidence would result in considerable notoriety . . . and because . . . the author included in his text a study of student radicals in the United States, thereby exceeding the Agency's charter.”
¹²
That coverage had been at the request of the White House, but it was the Central Intelligence Agency that had agreed to the assignment.

There were many, many more reports, some from OCI, others from Chaos itself. In June 1969, Project Chaos began producing its own analyses, starting with the special paper “Foreign Communist Support to Revolutionary Protest
Movements in the U.S.” In January 1971 came “Definition and Assessment of Existing Internal Security Threat—Foreign.”

None of the reports found any evidence that Moscow, Hanoi, or other communists actually controlled American protesters. But this did not stop CIA analysts from pushing the evidence as hard as they could, repeatedly construing the simple fact of contact between Americans and communist officials as something more sinister. The value-laden reporting retailed what the administration wanted to hear. In mid-October 1969, when Richard Nixon was secretly considering a massive bombing campaign to coerce Hanoi, the antiwar movement held a Vietnam Moratorium protest in Washington. Project Chaos, after conceding that the protest would be bigger than anyone had anticipated, reported that it was

[l]ed by persons and organizations, whose names are familiar in the annals of dissent, a great number of people will be involved in the Washington-area . . . actions. Supported in large part by long-time dissidents, many whose motivation is suspect, it is debatable whether this . . . can have any favorable impact on an administration which must be as desirous of peace in Vietnam as the pacifists, and ironically, appears to be making noticeable progress towards a settlement with honor, despite the damaging effect on negotiations wrought by the domestic agitation for termination of U.S. involvement. That [Vietnam Moratorium Day] will be a comfort to Hanoi seems self-evident.
¹³

A month later came even bigger antiwar protests. The CIA already had doubt that as many Americans would turn out in the colder weather of November. The agency's anticipatory special report led off, “In spite of the past performance of Indo-Chinese communism, characterized by blood bath tactics and terrorism, the antiwar element somehow chooses to believe, or at least chooses to state, that an immediate U.S.
pullout would not result, necessarily, in wholesale slaughter of hundreds of thousands of innocent Vietnamese.” The report pictured the protest as a manifestation of classic leftist “united front” tactics, expressed a belief that the movement would fail to meet its goals—especially for promised subsequent demonstrations—and insisted that support for Nixon's policy was growing in the wake of the president's November 3 “great silent majority” speech. The CIA predicted the protest would be violent and might muster perhaps some 150,000. In a follow-up analysis Chaos predicted that “the previously estimated number of participants (150,000) can probably be revised downward” and repeated its estimate that “potential for violence continues high.”
¹⁴
In actuality, the number of protesters who turned out in
San Francisco
is variously counted at between 100,000 and 250,000. Those in Washington numbered more than half a million. Violence was minuscule. The protesters included senior diplomats, CIA officers—even Bill Colby's wife. Analysts with the Office of Current Intelligence (OCI) may have repeatedly and accurately rejected charges of foreign control over the movement, but reporting from Chaos itself had a distinctly different flavor.

Director Helms had already given the White House fresh copies of the earlier OCI analyses finding no foreign control. The reaction from Nixon and Kissinger was that Langley was not trying hard enough. Prodded by the administration, Helms reviewed CIA activities aimed at American dissidents late that summer. Here he had the chance to do what he told the Church Committee he would normally have done—tell the president this was wrong. Instead Helms issued a directive in September 1969 specifically claiming, “we have the proper approach in discharging this sensitive responsibility, while strictly observing the statutory and
de facto
proscriptions on Agency domestic involvements.”
¹⁵
Helms found that “several components” of the CIA had “legitimate operational
interest” in the “radical milieux,” and he referred approvingly to Ober's Chaos group, which Helms found needed “skilled analysts,” plus “experienced operations officers.” Ober had begun with just one single assistant. And Chaos needed “sophisticated computer support” to break down the backlog of undigested information. Helms also directed (“I expect”) Howard Osborn's office to share its Merrimac and Resistance data with Ober's unit.

Though he did not order it, the director encouraged CIA components to give up “a select few” skilled personnel to Chaos, and the agency's Office of Computer Services to provide “on-line capabilities and other facilities” not only for data storage and retrieval but for a “link with certain other elements of the security community.” In the offices of the Counterintelligence Staff, Angleton for the first time developed an organizational chart for Project Chaos and decided that it needed thirty-six officers. At this time, too, Ober's unit began to develop unilateral assets, going beyond its previous role as command center for domestic collection. Until then it had relied on collateral reporting from other CIA agents or the U.S. Army.

A security scare occurred during the summer of 1971 when the White House Office of Management and Budget conducted a review of CIA spending. Fearing the budgeteers might catch wind of Chaos, Ober obtained the agreement of top management to instruct agency personnel not to mention the project to examiners—then led by the selfsame James R. Schlesinger, who would one day order compilation of The Family Jewels. Given President Nixon's antipathy for the agency, and continuing White House pressure for CIA budget cuts, fencing off Chaos by itself indicates the priority accorded this illegal domestic spying.

In fact, Chaos actually grew. The size of the Special Operations Group had been set. But Ober felt he needed sixty people. At the time, the CIA's Counterintelligence Staff had about
two hundred, so it is evident that domestic surveillance consumed a substantial proportion of Angleton's complement. The Ober unit increased to more than forty, with others on temporary duty. By 1972 Chaos accounted for over 20 percent of the entire counterintelligence staff.

Before it was all over the Hydra computer system listed 300,000 Americans, and CIA had opened files on nearly 10,000 citizens, among them 14 members of Congress, including Representatives Bella Abzug and Patsy Mink.
¹⁶
The CIA's Central Reference Service also maintained informal “snag files,” unclassified collections of open source materials, primarily press clippings, on Americans who visited Cuba and other political activists. In promoting this data to outsiders, senior officials actually made exemplars of Chaos files on Black Power advocates H. Rap Brown and Eldridge Cleaver. Beatles musician John Lennon also figures in CIA records. There were a thousand more files pertaining to private organizations.
¹⁷
Chaos incorporated information from NSA monitoring and wiretaps. And it funneled unverified FBI data into the files, some months as many as a thousand items, making them all the more incendiary when Chaos then generated reports for the FBI, recycling the Bureau's own information, now sanctified as CIA material.

More intelligence came from agency units. The Domestic Contact Service, for example, provided Chaos more than two hundred reports between 1969 and 1973. In the latter part of 1973 it contributed to wiretaps by collecting phone company records listing U.S. phones originating overseas calls. The Foreign Broadcast Information Service supplied translations from news sources abroad. The Directorate of Science and Technology furnished technical services. Then there was the CIA's mail-opening project (
Chapter 4
). MH/Chaos utilized over 130 agent sources and developed 7 agents who infiltrated the antiwar movement. In addition, Chaos used sources referred to it by the FBI. A separate “Project 2” under
the pseudonymous “Earl Williams” sought to insert CIA agents into movement groups to establish cover credentials for further spy assignments. One pseudonymous agent, “Bob Finch,” was prebriefed to seek out specific movement leaders in whom the FBI was interested who were involved in the May Day protest of 1971. Thus Project 2 agents also collected intelligence.
¹⁸
Frank Rafalko, whose initial job was to work against black radicals, debriefed agents in hotel rooms. Chaos had about 30 agents on the books at any given time. And Project Chaos initiated at least two wiretaps that, if in the United States, were illegal. Mission creep again.

According to the late Angus Mackenzie, a California academic who made an extensive inquiry into CIA domestic activities, one of Ober's key agents was a Chicagoan named Salvatore J. Ferrera. This fellow's trajectory suggests how insidious Chaos could be. Recruited at Loyola University in Chicago, Ferrera first made friends with leftist writers, who introduced him to people interested in creating a movement newspaper,
Quicksilver Times
, of which he became a founder. Ferrera helped engineer an editorial revolt after which, for a time,
Quicksilver
was actually run by FBI undercover agents. With cover as a journalist, Ferrera reported on the paper, on the Youth International Party (Abbie Hoffman's “Yippies”), on the National Peace Action Coalition, on movement plans for what became the May Day protests, and more.

The actual CIA operation to infiltrate agents into the movement was known as Project MP/Lodestar. Several operatives were inserted and relied upon over extended periods. Four more were used on single missions. They were among forty sources referred to Chaos, slightly over half by the FBI, the rest from other CIA branches. Reporting from a hundred additional agents topped off the Chaos files. As for Sal Ferrera, after May Day he went to Paris and used his background to insinuate himself into groups there. Ferrera then took up with CIA whistleblower Philip Agee (see
Chapter 8
)
and actually supplied the agency periodic progress reports on Agee's book exposing CIA Latin American activity.
¹⁹

Ober used the wide variety of data to generate special intelligence analyses plus spot reports. The latter bore formulaic text observing no evidence of protesters' international links, then went on to cover dissident activities in considerable detail. Americans might be startled to learn some of what the CIA thought it knew. Chaos analysts seem to have loved the image of fire, and often wrote of the “fire” driving the movement or the “hot” disputes among various protest groups. In early 1972 Chaos intelligence went into high gear to report on protesters' preparations to demonstrate at that year's political conventions, matching technical aid Project Merrimac was simultaneously giving the Secret Service. As late as the end of 1972, when America underwent an actual firestorm of controversy over the Nixon administration's Christmas Bombing of Hanoi, Chaos opined the upheaval reflected the “dying embers” of the movement. But the CIA reports were not mere recapitulations; many took the form of listing upcoming events, for which authorities could then prepare, or analyzed the momentum and support for future protests. All this went beyond simple domestic spying.

When the reports could cite some actual international event, Chaos positively gushed. On July 26, 1972, a CIA report mentioned that representatives of a Swedish peace group would participate in protests, and that a delegation of Americans was going to meet Vietnamese representatives in Paris. The report grouped these as “new indications of foreign plans or efforts to inspire, support, influence or exploit activities designed to disrupt or harass the Republican National Convention,” where Richard Nixon would receive his party's nomination for a second term as president a month later.
²⁰

Activists opposed to the Vietnam war did not know anything specific about Project Chaos, protected by its own secrecy “compartment” at the time, but they were also not
unaware of CIA interest. When Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) came together in Detroit at the end of January and beginning of February 1971 to present testimony about the nature of the conflict—what they called the “Winter Soldier Investigation”—the subject of the agency and the movement came up when someone asked about the CIA in Laos. “Take a look at your own antiwar movement,” said VVAW organizer Mike McCusker. “You'll find the CIA in there somewhere.”
²¹
McCusker had no idea how right he was. VVAW would be among major groups at the 1972 Republican convention, and it duly figured in Chaos reporting.

Mr. Ober's unit prepared detailed briefings on its activities in June 1972. These showed that the 1969 Helms directive had indeed strengthened the Special Operations Group. Chaos had added several branch chiefs that fall and reached its full complement in mid-1970. Despite overtime, there were not enough staff to cover the material. In the spring of 1971 the CIA decided to add another eighteen staff to the domestic spy unit. It never reached that level. On June 2, 1972, actual Chaos personnel numbered forty-two. Several more field sources were informants seconded by the FBI to work under CIA control. In each of the years 1970 and 1971, the FBI had furnished over ten thousand data items to Chaos. Ober's unit itself had originated more than two thousand messages in each of those years, received as many cables, plus over a thousand dispatches by hand. It had put out some 1,457 spot reports and generated 51 memos, studies, or estimates. The briefings pictured MH/Chaos as a “low-cost collection program.” But in July 1972 CIA headquarters sent a cable to its stations reducing the priority for data on American dissidents. Officials attempted to reorient Project Chaos with a bid to make it the CIA focal point for international terrorism. That gambit again hints at the agency's basic mind-set. Comments on the legality of domestic spying in the Ober briefings, if there were any, have been deleted in declassification.