In July 1968, Helms decided to consolidate all CIA domestic intelligence operations under one program and title. The new operation was called CHAOS and Ober was in charge. (11) Its activities greatly expanded from then on at the urging not only of President Johnson, but also his main advisers Dean Rusk and Walt Rostow. Both men were convinced that Hoover was right and foreign intelligence agencies were involved in anti-war protests in the U.S. Johnson was not convinced and wanted the CIA's intelligence in order to compare it with that provided by the FBI.
The Nixon Administration
After Richard Nixon took office in January 1969, Helms continued operations with the assurance that nothing would ever be leaked to the public. But he began to face pressure from two opposing factions within the CIA community.
One wanted to expand domestic operations even more, while the other reminded him that Operation CHAOS and similar activities were well "over the line" of illegality and outside the CIA's charter. To put a damper on this internal dissent, Helms ordered Ober to stop discussing these activities with his direct boss in counterintelligence, James Jesus Angleton. The internal protests continued, however, as White House aide and staunch anti-Communist Tom Charles Huston, pressed for ever increasing domestic operations.
Huston was eager to expand Operation CHAOS to include overseas agents and to "share" intelligence with the FBI's intelligence division, directed by William Sullivan. There were more than 50 CHAOS agents now, many receiving several weeks of assignment and training positions to establish their covers as radicals. (12) Once they returned to the U.S. and enrolled in colleges and universities, they had the proper "credentials."
In June 1970 Nixon met with Hoover, Helms, NSA Director Admiral Noel Gaylor, and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) representative Lt. Gen. Donald V. Bennett and told them he wanted a coordinated and concentrated effort against domestic dissenters. To do that, he was creating the Interagency Committee on Intelligence (ICI), chaired by Hoover. The first ICI report, in late June, recommended new efforts in "black bag operations," wiretapping, and a mail-opening program. In late July 1970, Huston told the members of the ICI that their recommendations had been accepted by the White House. (13)
John Dean replaced Tom Huston as White House aide in charge of domestic intelligence, and at his urging, a Justice Department group, the Intelligence Evaluation Committee, was established to study domestic groups, over Hoover's protest. Deteriorating relations between the FBI and the other intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, caused Hoover to fire William Sullivan. At that time, Sullivan was the liaison officer between the FBI and the other intelligence agencies and he strongly favored the expansion of domestic operations.
Second Thoughts
Even Helms began to have second thoughts about how large CHAOS had grown, but Nixon made it clear to him that the CIA was a presidential tool he wanted at his disposal. Helms got the message, yet he also understood the growing uneasiness in other government circles. In 1972, the CIA's Inspector General wrote a report that expressed concern about Operation CHAOS in the following way: "... we also encountered general concern over what appeared to be a monitoring of the political views and activities of Americans not known to be or suspected of being involved in espionage ... Stations were asked to report on the whereabouts and activities of prominent persons ... whose comings and goings were not only in the public domain, but for whom allegations of subversion seemed sufficiently nebulous to raise renewed doubts as to the nature and legitimacy of the CHAOS program." (14)
Helms was being squeezed by White House demands to expand Operation CHAOS and the fear that the whole question of domestic operations was going to become public knowledge, as Hoover feared. Helms found himself constantly shoring up one lie with another and then another. He found himself deceiving Congress and lying to the public as well as CIA employees. In March 1971, a group of young CIA executives known as the Management Advisory Group (MAG) protested Operation CHAOS and similar domestic operations by issuing a statement saying, "MAG opposes any Agency activity which could be construed as targeted against any person who enjoys the protection of the U.S. Constitution ... whether or not he resides in the United States." (15)
Helms of course denied the CIA was involved in domestic operations, or using basic American institutions such as the Peace Corps, the business community, or the media as covers for CIA operations. Just a few years later, Oswald Johnston of the Washing ton Star reported that over 35 American journalists, some full-time, some free-lance, and some major media correspondents were on the CIA payroll. And in 1974 the CIA admitted that over two hundred CIA agents were operating overseas posing as businessmen. (16)
The Collapse of the House of Cards
The web of deception, misinformation, lies, and illegal domestic activities began to unravel with speed in the summer of 1972 when Howard Osborn, then Chief of Security for the CIA, informed Helms that two former CIA officers, E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, were involved in a burglary at the Watergate complex in Washington, D.C. The house of cards was about to come crashing down and Helms now wanted to salvage what he could and distance himself from not only Watergate but also the domestic operations. He appointed CIA Executive Director William Colby to handle any investigations into the Agency's domestic operations and began to prepare for the inevitable.
Helms was called to Camp David by President Nixon and subsequently fired. His replacement was James Schlesinger (who would last but a few months). Schlesinger would be replaced in July 1973 by Colby, and Helms would become U.S. Ambassador to Iran to get him as far away as possible. In an effort at damage control, Colby decided that Operation CHAOS and Project RESISTANCE should be terminated.
In 1975 the CIA underwent public investigation and scrutiny by both the Church and Rockefeller committees. These investigations revealed considerable evidence showing that the CIA had carried out its activities with a tremendous disregard for the law, both in the U.S. and abroad.
Cont ...