Operation CHAOS: The CIA's Domestic Files on Antiwar Americans

The Story

In the summer of 1967, riots had broken out in American cities and protests against the Vietnam War were growing. President Lyndon Johnson wanted to know whether foreign governments were behind it. According to the Rockefeller Commission, which investigated the CIA's activities inside the United States in 1975, CIA Director Richard Helms testified that he was under continuing, substantial pressure from the president to find out.

On August 15, 1967, the CIA's deputy director for plans ordered the agency's counterintelligence staff to set up an operation for overseas coverage of subversive student activities. That became the Special Operations Group. In mid-1968 it was given a cryptonym: CHAOS.

"Should anyone learn of its existence it would prove most embarrassing for all concerned." (CIA Director Richard Helms to Henry Kissinger, February 1969)

The answers it produced did not please the White House. In November 1967, Helms personally delivered a study to Johnson that found little evidence of foreign involvement and no evidence of any significant foreign financial support for the peace movement. A 1968 paper called "Restless Youth" concluded that student radicalism grew from alienation at home, not from conspiracies run from abroad. One version of that paper included a section on American students. When Helms sent it to President Nixon's national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, in February 1969, his cover memo admitted the problem: "This is an area not within the charter of this Agency, so I need not emphasize how extremely sensitive this makes the paper. Should anyone learn of its existence it would prove most embarrassing for all concerned."

According to the Commission, the agency's repeated conclusion that it could find no significant foreign connection only led to more White House demands. In June 1969, a Nixon aide wrote that the president wanted to know what gaps existed in coverage of the protest movement and how to close them. The operation grew. It moved into a vaulted basement area, adopted security measures the Commission called "extreme, even by normally strict CIA standards," and was cut off from the normal chain of command.

Starting in late 1969, CHAOS recruited its own agents to collect information abroad. To give them cover, some were drawn from domestic dissident groups or told to join them. The Commission found that on three occasions agents were used to collect information on strictly domestic matters. One was sent to Washington in 1971 to "get as close as possible" to leaders of the May Day antiwar demonstrations and report on their plans. Helms testified that he was not aware of the domestic use of these agents.

The paper piled up. The operation compiled some 13,000 files, including files on 7,200 American citizens. Its computer index, nicknamed "Hydra" because each level of secrecy needed its own password, held more than 300,000 names of people and organizations. It also drew on the CIA's New York mail intercept program. Some of it was absurd. The Commission described a file on Grove Press, apparently opened because the company had published a book by the Soviet spy Kim Philby. Because Grove Press had also produced the "sex-oriented" film "I Am Curious Yellow," analysts dutifully clipped and filmed movie critics' reviews of it.

Not everyone inside the CIA approved. One division wanted "nothing to do" with CHAOS, according to a 1971 memo. In 1972, the agency's own inspector general's staff was blocked from reviewing the files. A December 1972 memo for the record summed up Helms' attitude: "CHAOS is a legitimate counterintelligence function of the Agency and cannot be stopped simply because some members of the organization do not like this activity."

As the war wound down, so did the operation. In August 1973, new CIA Director William Colby ordered it limited to collecting information abroad. On March 15, 1974, the agency ended it.

The Commission's verdict was mixed but firm. It said the declared mission, looking for foreign influence, was proper, and that most of the information came from FBI reports or open sources rather than CIA spying. It found no evidence that the operation used wiretaps or break-ins against dissidents. But it concluded that "some domestic activities of Operation CHAOS unlawfully exceeded the CIA's statutory authority," and it recommended that presidents stop asking the CIA to do internal security work.