Operation CHAOS
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- For the science fiction novel, see Operation Chaos (1971 book).
Operation CHAOS was a domestic espionage project conducted by the CIA. A department within the CIA was established by President Lyndon Johnson which then came to be known as the Domestic Operations Division (DOD). The division's main function was to manage the direction, support, and coordination of clandestine operations and activities within the United States.
CIA director John McCone was assigned to the DOD in order to setup espionage operations on the uprising of college student protests against the U.S. government's Vietnam foreign policies. Two new units were set up to target anti-war protestors and organizations: Project RESISTANCE, which worked with college administrators, campus security and local police to identify anti-war activists and political dissidents; and Project MERRIMAC, which monitored any demonstrations being conducted in the Washington D.C. area. Local police departments also worked with the CIA by monitoring student activists and infiltrating anti-war organizations. Some of their assignments involved initiating staged burglaries, illegal entries (black bag jobs), interrogations and electronic surveillance.
When president Nixon came to office in 1969, all of these domestic surveillance activities were consolidated into Operation CHAOS. After the revelation of two former CIA agents’ involvement in the Watergate break-in, the publication of an article about CHAOS in the New York Times and the growing concern about distancing itself from illegal domestic spying activities, led the CIA to shut down Operation CHAOS. But during the life of the project, the Church Committee and the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (the Rockefeller Commission) revealed that the CIA had compiled files on over 13,000 individuals, including 7,000 US citizens and 1,000 domestic organizations.
[edit] CIA operations guidelines
- Gather information on their immorality.
- Show them as scurrilous and depraved.
- Call attention to their habits and living conditions.
- Explore every possible embarrassment.
- Investigate personal conflicts or animosities between them.
- Send articles to newspapers showing their depravity.
- Use narcotics and free sex for entrapment.
- Have members arrested on marijuana charges.
- Exploit the hostilities between various persons.
- Use cartoons and photographs to ridicule them.
- Use disinformation to confuse and disrupt.
- Get records of their bank accounts.
- Obtain specimens of handwriting.
- Provoke target groups into rivalries that resulted in deaths.
[edit] See also
- Covert operation
- ECHELON
- NSA warrantless surveillance controversy
- Project MERRIMAC
- Project MINARET
- Project RESISTANCE
- Project SHAMROCK
[edit] External links
- CHAOS, MERRIMAC, and RESISTANCE | PDF
- Development of Surveillance Technology & Risk of Abuse of Economic Information | PDF
- Domestic Surveillance: The History of Operation CHAOS
- ECHELON: America's Secret Global Surveillance Network
- Operation Chaos: The CIA's War Against the Sixties Counter-Culture
- Staff report: CHAOS and the office of security
