[to4-t0304-t00tt] . > SEP.28.1998 3:23PM A NO.279 PL ; o oo SECRET The Special Investigations Group of the CI Staff (CI/SIG) CI/SIG (the Special Investigations Group) did not exist prior to the establishment of the CI Staff in early 1955, Its major functions as described in CSI No, 70-1 of March 1955 are much more modest than the functions ascribed to it in a write-up \ by the Staff in early 1973. The 1955 description of functions is as follows: 7 | "Special Investigation Unit "Major Functions "Performs the CI investigation and analysis of any | known or potential security leak in the Clandestine ; . Services organization, whether in headquarters or in the field, from the standpoint of its effect on (1) existing operations, and (2) the cover of personnel. In performing this function, maintains close working relations with the Security Office, the latter being primarily concerned in such cases from Agency seclfrity rather than an operational security stand- poirt," By 1973 the description of tasks which had been assigned to CI/SIG or which they had absorbed during the course of events over a period of nearly two decades provides a much broader range of functions and responsibilities, They are listed as follows; "ClI/Special Investigations Group "1. Conducts research into the long-range validity of CIA operations in terms of known or potential hostile capabilities, including penetrations, and of Agency security. "2, Carries out coordination with the Office of Security in such cases. "3, Maintains and uses sensitive counterintelligence holdings, including certain Comint and defector materials, to match these against operational and personality data and thus to derive operational leads. "4, Coordinates and cooperates with counterintelligence and security elements of other departments and agencies of the USG to detect, tabulate, and take counter-action against hostile plans or approaches abroad for the recruitment of American officials (American Targets Program). SECRE T 144
14-00000 SEP.28.1999 3:24PM A Wee 2 too SECRET "S. Plays a direct role in sensitive counterintel-_ ligence liaison with closely allied foreign intelligence services on hostile penetration plans and operations, "6. Reviews compatibility between cover and assignments of CIA staff members. "7, Maintains central data on leaks to the news media and assists the Office of Security, as necessary, in determining the sources of leaks. "8, Maintains central data on the nature and extent of known compromise of Agency staff personnel to intelligence services, whether liaison or hostile. 2 "9, Prepares studies of individuals, including [journalist's) whose foreign intelligence connections are @ source of concern. "10, Carries out additional and sensitive tasks as assigned by the C/CI," The first chief of the Special Investigation Unit (SIU) (as it was called in CSI NO. 70-1) was Birch O'Neal, a former FBI officer who had transferred to CIA after World War I1.* In the mid-fifties,SIG had rather slim picking and appears to have spent most of its time investigating various aspects of the [LcMayroitiy complex (the (Boris Morros} case) as it affected US interests based on information the Agency acquired from foreign sources. Then in. 1962 SIG received its biggest shot in the arm with the defection of Golitsyn who brought with him several dozen leads to American citizens including some supposedly in CIA. The-handling of these leads was assigned to SIG by Angleton, including the information emanating from Golitsyn, which related to foreign countries. Thus O'Neal and his assistant, Jean Evans, played a major role in directing the handling of the Golitsyn leads (or "Serials" as Angleton invariably called them). The activity continued through- out the sixties reaching its apex in the period 1964-65 when the HONETOL inyestigations (of CIA staff officers) was at its most *The term Special Investigations Group (SIG) became common usage in the sixties but no exact date can be assigned for this change. SECRET 1457 3 Ye
14-00000 “SER. 28.1998 3 3:25PN Fi NO.279 PL a [| and a contract agent fn t a eee SECRET 18 In addition to the Office of the Chief (including two special assistants and a Secretariat) the Staff was composed of seven "Divisions" and four “Groups,”] waded. For fiscal year 1958 the CI Staff budget was The sum of las allotted for Fiscal Year 1959, and he X? Mies as to be requested for 1960. Specific figures were quoted in the appropriate sections for projects or support, such as travel. Otherwise the budget was almost solely for salaries of Staff personnel. | The survey next gave’ brief attention to deception, agreeing that it had to be carefully compartmented and that it best belonged in- the CI Staff. On the subject of the “Special Investi- gation Unit, however, the survey took its first serious exception to the organization and operation of the Staff stating: . "Hence, in order not to contaminate a senior staff (CI Staff) with Agency employee investigation and/or exploitation, this should be done by individuals with CE ability within a special section of the Office of Security. It is "Recommended that: "a, The DD/P release for assignment to the Office of Security several individuals, as may be appropriate, of proven CE ability to handle and exploit all cases of CE aspect involving Agency personnel; ‘bh. SID and its function be eliminated from CI Staff; and "c. The DCI approve the above recommendations." The survey team took special note of the Projects Branch of | CI Staff, the section that handled the mail opening project. How it was operated and viewed in 1959 is not without interest e s o a vA » ‘J ‘. in view of its subsequent role in the "Family Jewels" issue when it was revealed to the Rockefeller and Church Committees. Thus it is revealing to note the 1959 survey found nothing wrong with SECRET 49.
14-00000 68.1995 3:26PM A ny . i ba i ; y . toe + we ar ara onbtiay 9 pes: 6p ey eH rT oe 028 bed eS oe ' Bey ” , inet arte RE By gE ees ey, the mail opening program except they worried about its security and also thought it would be more effective if expanded. This is how the survey described the project in 1959: "a. The Project Branch conducts a project of censorship within the US of mail from the USSR which is called HTLINGUAL. Originally this project was developed by the Office of Security at the request of SR Division in 1952. Its purpose was to identify and to obtain samples of handwriting and basic back- ground facts on long established correspondence between persons in the USSR and the United States. Such information was to be used operationally to sustain any communications with secret writing, which would likely pass the Soviet censors and could be picked up in the U.S.A. The interception is done at the central Post Office in New York, and the letters are delivered to the Agency for processing and return. As the need for Soviet communication _ camouflage lessened with the increase of legal travel to and from the USSR the Project was re- oriented and expanded toward direct CI and FI goals in September 1956, and it was taken over by the CI Staff. ~ "pb, At present this grou crvses| | employees in New York and[ lat Hea YS, © Those in New York are under the fice of Security; . those in Headquarters under the CI Staff. The yearly cost is the total of the various salaries. "c. The primary purposes of this Project are to produce CE information, operational leads and any positive intelligence that can be gleaned from the meil. "d, The operation in New York photographs about 50,000 envelopes per month out of a total of about 200,000 ‘letters coming from the USSR to in- dividuals in the U.S.A. via New York. These films are forwarded to Headquarters and examined in the YProjects Branch and some 10,000 of them are selected on the basis of Agency interest in the areas of origin in Russia. These 10,000 negatives are then made into prints, and the names of the addressees are recorded alphabetically on IBM cards. From the IBM cards RI makes a continuing record and a copy of this record of names is returned to the Projects Branch. "e, About 1,000 of these intercepts are opened per month in New York by the Office of Security, the letters verifaxed and copies sent to ..the Projects Branch at Headquarters. There is a watch list of some 500 names on file both in the Branch at Head-. quarters and in the Security Office in New York and any letters coming from or going to any of the names SECRET 50 |
14-00000 “"S-BCRET on this list are opened. This watch list is revised quarterly. It is made up of names of interest princi- pally to CJ, SR Division, and the Security Office, and includes names listed by the FBI. "f, There are trained linguist-analysts in the Branch who extract information of interest from the intercepts, and the disseminability of this information is determined by the Chief of Projects Branch. At. present the rate of dissemination from Projects Branch runs at an average of about 150 per month and the number is. increasing. Sixty percent of these’ dissemina-. tions are positive intelligence. The disseminations «.~ are controlled by the Deputy Chief of CI Staff. "g. SR Division’ has obtained valuable operational leads from this Project, and the FBI wants as much>* information as it can get by this means. . "h. There are 40 individuals in CIA who are officially cleared to know about this Project. These include members of SR Division, Office of Security, CI Staff, and RI Machine Records, COPS, DD/P, DD/S, Director of Personnel (due to his previous service in the DD/P) and the Chief, FI Staff. The DCI, DDCI and the IG Staff also have access. to the Project. wii, It would appear from present results that much moTeevalue could be obtained from this Project if more intercepts were opened. Project Branch is at presents handling four times as much volume as it did in the past with the same number of personnel and at the same cost. ‘Its staff at Headquarters is capable of handling 2,000 per month with the present T/O, but the New York staff could not supply that number of opened intercepts unless its personnel was increased. It is felt by the Branch that a rate of 4,000 intercepts per month would be a good future goal. It is estimated that this would require an increase of one interceptor, one secretary and one letter opener in New York and an addition to Project Branch at Headquarters of four linguist-analysts, four clerical personnel and one reports officer. "jJ. The Office of Security, which works with Project Branch, is agreeable to the’ gradual expansion of the operation. It would be in favor of expanding at present to the extent of opening more intercepts, and . taking samples of thesé intercepts for S$. W. This could be done by the aforementioned increase of Security Office personnel in New York without an immediate increase in the Headquarters staff. It would be operationally much nore feasible if a securé room could be obtained in the Post Office in New York for their sole use.. Since the DCI made the original arrangement for this operation with the Chief Postal Inspector, any changes in the system of operation should be made in the same way. This is the only level at which such arrangements could be accom- - plished securely." _ . SECRET S1L
14-00000 versus area division prerogative in the conduct of operations. Noting that there might have been some immediate reasons for the CI Staff to take on operational aspects in its efforts to increase CI activity, nevertheless it concluded these reasons were not necessarily based on the best operational and organizational pro- cedures and methods. ‘The normal staff functions, the survey opined, could be carried out effectively with a much smaller but highly experienced staff whose impact and counsel would more favorably be received by the operating elements of the DD/P. The team also concluded that there had been insufficient attention given to penetrating hostile intelligence organizations and recommended that: "Chief, CI direct the efforts of the Cl Staff'toward the development of programs for the aggressive pursuit of penetration activity against hostile intelligence services." ee In,a forward to the report, the “Inspector General of the day, Lyman “Kirkpatrick, directed special attention to one parficular . aspect of CI work. "The “Special Investigation Division assists the Office of Security in using DD/P assets to trace leads concerning CIA employees. This is probably a necessary assist to the Office of Security but should be handled with the utmost of discretion and security. It would be very seriously damaging to the efforts of the CI Staff if it ever became known that it was engaged in any_ ; activities involving CIA employees. An analgous situation is the stir caused by the occasional misimpression created abroad that CIA reports on‘other US Government employees. Thus within CIA the. Office of Security must be the sole unit to bear the stigma of being concerned with fellow employees." ; Unfortunately this sensible warning was not heeded by CI Staff management, or by the management of the Clandestine Service as a whole for that matter. Instead, in.the mid=1960s the CI. Staff, with SIG in the vanguard, hypnotized by the allegations v . wv of Golitsyn, launched HONETOL - the active investigation of. numerous Agency employees (five in particular) - with generally SECRET 5$L
14-00000 P. 6.1998 ¥ Fe 3: 3@PM A NO. 279 SECRET SENSITIVE NOPORN > 1 had written a@ provocative analysis that found Nosenko bona fide and challenged as incorrect the Monster Plot assessmente to the contrary. Even more provocative, he had provided a copy directly to then DDCI Richard Helms when stymied within the Seviet Division in promoting Ais view. Kalaris first learned of this well after McCoy joined the ataff, when McCoy himself told him. Angleton, on the other hand, was’ certainly net unaware of this part of MaCoey's background, and it is likely that he and Recca and Miler interpreted Kalaris's selection of McCoy as evidence that Kalaris was out te discredit then. Kalaris, originally having been summoned home to take over temporarily until a replacement for Angleten could be found, had a title in the beginning as “Acting Chief, CIOPS.* In March, Nelson told him, "We haven't found anybody yet," and as time went on it looked increasingly as if he and Colby were not going to find anyone. But by thie time Kalaris was becoming intrigued with what he was doing, and with the potential of the job. fie went back 7 a 2 to see his family in late March, and when he returned he told Nelson he would take the job on a permanent basis. In Sune, the “Acting” was dropped and Kalaris became Chief, CIOPS. What. Kalsris Found... The state of Affairs As he looked around, Kalaris found what struck him as a desolate situation. Mountains of traffic were coming in to the staff, but none of it seemed to be of much importance. The staff had no relationship with the Soviet Division or 6 SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN P.8 (3 eo ) aS ees aa eee
| i : 1 SEP. 28.1998 ‘ Ve 33 3:3aPm A NO. 279 SECRET SENSITIVE NOYORN any of the other geographic divisions. [ff the divisions had t any significant cases, Kalaris was unaware of them because the divisions were giving him nothing of substance. Mecoy's arrival in the staff made thie picture unmistakably clear since, fresh from SE Division and a position therein that made him privy to virtually all the division's sensitive cases, he was able to tell Kalaris what he was missing on the SE front. It also before long became evident that there was an element of a two-way street in thie situation. Soviet-East Burepean cases were @iscovered in CY Staff files that the area divisions had never been informed of or had only limited information about. Thase included such cases as MORINE (8 past FBI source of voluminous GRU operational documents who was known to the Soviet Division but whose operational leads had been shared neither with that division nor with the other geographic divisions in whose territery tha Soviet agents were working) ;[KITTYHAMK] (a KGB officer who had contacted CIA during a visit to the United States Several years back and who figured in a double-agent game being run by the FBI) ; [GRIDIRON] (Leslie Jamas Bennett, former senior officer in Soviet counterespionage in the Canadian RCMP whe had resigned from that service in 1972 under a cloud of suspicion engendered by the Angleton staff and iteé guru Anatoliy Golitsyn--a case never briefed to / either SE or EUR Division); and [aptvoq), also known as fozone/ a. ntelligence officer who defected in in 1972 and subsequently came to this country and was debriefed by CIOPS officers, but whose information and leads had not been furnished to the area divisions) . Many of the people in the staff had been hand-picked by Angleton. They had been in their jobs for a number of years and were well settled into their way of doing things. So 7 SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN P.9
14-00000 SEP.26.1998 3:31PM A GLURE2 SRABLTLVE URUK NO.279  F.1@ : soe ‘ a wall in fact that: most had given up hope of ever going anywhere else or accomplishing anything new. Compartmentation was a way of life, and management was remote from the rank and file. Kalaris was appalled to learn that hie chief of suppert, who had worked in the ataff for four or five years, had never met Angleton; he had only Ff seen him from a distance, The overall atmosphere seemed to Kalaris to be conditioned by doublethink and mirrors. Compartmentation in the Angleton staff had been carried to Guch extremes, however, as to become counterproductive. With Angleton not disposed to be ferthcoming with his successer, and Rocca and Miler taking their lead from hin (and Hood already having left the staff and the Agency seme months earlier), it was difficult for the Kalaris team to find out what the staff had been doing. Like the blind men and the elephant, the parsonnel below the top leadership had never been exposed to more than their own narrow slice of staff activities, and accordingly even with the best of will they were limited in what they were able to tel) the new management. The MORINE case (see below) provided a vivid illustration of this point. McCoy, with his Soviet Division hackground, was particularly struck at the almost total absance of Soviet yf expertise in the etaff. There was no Russian language capability and no realistic area knowledge, and what experiance there was in Soviet matters was dated and Limited. This was the case not only in R&A, but in the Operations Group as well. One of the first things Kalaris had to ao after assuming office was find out what was in the 6afes and vaults in the Angleton premises. This ultimately took months, as there were several vaults and many safes containing among them large quantities of paper. All this a t GECRET SENGITIVE NOFORN
| | | | | . ad 3:32PM A NO.279 ° P.1i SECRET GERGITIVE NOFORN a 4 had to be reviewed, and not only for the purpose of LF) determining what it was all about. Significant segments: of this material, it was discovered, were unique to the CI Staff and had never been integrated into the DO file and records system. Information from the mail-intercept program, for example, was indexed inside the CI Staff, put reflected nowhere outside. Other material largely duplicated files maintained by other elements. Some files contained mostly press clippings. Decisions had to be made and action taken, item by item, on indexing, transfer of files, determinations of what needed to be retained and what could or should be destroyed, etc. As the magnitude of this task became evident, arrangaments were made for personnel from IMS to be detailed to the staff on a long-term basis to geo through the material. In a vaulted area across from Angleton's office a couple of safes were found for which ne combination could be located, and which accordingly had to be drilled by specialists from the Office of Security. Kalaris rejects as untrue the image conveyed in Mangold's hook about. Angleton that has him personally leading SHAT teams of safecrackers as they went about epening the Angleton safas,* but it is correct that he was present during the drilling. He had never seen this operation performed before, and was interested to observe how it was done. Some curious and some disquieting things turned up as the new team gradually made its way through the C1 Staff premises. “-On the lighter side, in one safe two Bushman bows and gome arrows were found. Coneerned about the peesibility that the arrows might be poisoned, Kalaris had them sent-~ * Tom Mangold, Cold Warrior, Simen & Schuster, 1991, pp. 327-330 4 9 SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN
14-00000 SEP.28.1998 3:33PM A SECRET BENSATAVE NULUKE NO. 273 very carefully--to OTS for examination.*® When they were returned, with a judgment. that they were harmless, Kalaris gave them to Angleton as a personal memento. VF 7 # @I ‘Staff Meme CI 136-75, 10 July 1975 ‘10 a SECRET SENSITIVE HOFORN 12
14-00000 | i E ( E . * “SEP. 26.1998 is 3: 33Pt4 A NO. 279 P.13 ‘ 8 ‘GECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN -~-In @ more gerious vein, files were found on the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and his brother ‘Robert F. Kannedy. These included autopsy pictures of the remains of Robert Kennedy. Although Nosenke's account of the KGB's involvement with Lee Harvey Oswald and his denial that the KGB had anything to do with the murder of John Kennedy might reasonably explain an Angleton interest in the John Kennedy assassination, neither Kalaris nor Blee, with whom Kalaris consulted on this bizarre finding, had any idea why Angleton had the pictures. Neither could they think of any reason why it was appropriate for CI Staff files to contain them. They were accordingly destroyed. -“Angleton's dogged pursuit, inspired by Golitsyn and his theories, of Saviet intelligence penetration of CIA had led to secret investigations, stretching ever a period of many years, of over forty serving CIA officers. Known a6 the HONETOL cases, and later sometimes referred to in the popular literature as the Great Molehunt, this activity had produced extensive files in the CI Staff.* In addition, eeveral hundred files were found on American citizens who were mot CIA personnel but on whom Golitsyn analysis haa Similarly cast some sert of KGB shadow. Among the most noteworthy of these were files on W. Averell Harriman and Henry Kissinger. Most of these files were composed entirely of newspaper reports and a few FBI reports. ~-Classified materials, in quantities that ultimately filled several packing boxes, were eventually found in Golitsyn's possession at his[upstate New Yorkj farm house. Some of this material consisted of personnel-type files on CIA staff officers. Golitsyn, who resisted returning these s documents when Kalaris sant people to retrieve then, bs * The term “HONETOL,* used as an acronym, allegedly derives from a combination of parts of the last name of FBI Director John Edgar Hoover and the first name of Soviet KGB defector and Angleton guru Anatoliy Golitsyn. 11 / SECRET SENGITIVE NOFORN pic
SL. AG. loss 3? are H SECRET SENGITIVE NOFORN maintained that Angleton and Miler had given these files to him te review and to keep as long as he needed them, and he was not finished with them yet. Ultimately, all the files that were found were retrieved from Golitsyn, though it has never been possible to be certain that this represented all the files that he in fact had. -~A, potentially explosive find surfaced in June: a bag | of mail from the mail-intercept--HTLINGUAL--program. It had, been the public exposé of HTLINGUAL and the MHCHAOS program, { infiltration of domestic leftist and dissident groups in search of insidious foreign sponsorship, in a front page | story by Seymour Hersh in The New York Times on 22 December 1974 that had precipitated Colby's decision to force Angleton's retirement, and led to establishment in 1975 of the Rockefeller Commission on CIA Activities in the United States, and the Church (Senate) and Pike (House) committees to investigate CIA and its activities. Both these programe had been CI Staff responsibilities. CIA was receiving letters from citizens who believed CIA had intercepted their mail, a CI Staff representative had just finished briefing the Senate Select Committee Staff on the eubject,* and Colby on 10 July would be making a 6tatement on the mail-intercept program before the Pastal Facilities, Mail, and Labor Management Subcommittee of the House Post Office and Civil Service Committee. The bag of mail was a hot potato. Kalaris's memorandum to ADDO Blee dated 3 July 1975 tells the story. ** "1. In the course of preparing for a move of CI Project materials from one vault te another, we found, on top of a shelf, a dispatch [dated] 27 March 1972 fron{ cos 2) /é- 7| Jo Chief WK. This dispatch forwarded 114 items mailed from the Soviet Union te various persona in the U, Sg 7 a Rc 17 June 1975 12 | 2 GECRET SENQGITIVE NOFORN
‘SEP.26.1998 3:34PM A NO.273. P15 \ , ‘ SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN \ e Theee had been in a package delivered to a doctor in the /6~-7. _ [| who turned them ovar to the [Station] which in turn forwarded them to Headquartere. The dispatch was “a 's passed to CI Staff by WH Division in 1972. A note on tha oe vs dispatch indicates that CY Staff took no action other than to process the materials into its files; but the ¢I Project eontinued to hold the originals. At the time ¢I Project theorized that a mailing label on a package fro in New Hyde Park, New York, to the | doctor had fallen off the package for the doctor, and been erroneously fastened to the package containing the Soviet mail. *2. This is the only case as far as we know in which ° the original mail has been held by this Agency. In all other cases we examined the mail, opened it surreptitiously, phetographed it, and put it back inte the mail channels for delivery to the addressee. Thus, this presents us with a peculiar preblem. The letters have all been opened with a latter opener. Wa do not know at. what point along the way the letters were opened. “3. We golicit your advice. There seams to be at least two courses which we might pursue. We could send these items to the people to whom they area addressed, under caver of a letter explaining how we had acquired the mail and apologizing for our delay in forwarding it. Another course of action would be to reinsert the mail into the postal system by forwarding it under cover of a memorandun to the U.S. Postal Service. In the memorandum we would state that the mail came into our hands overseas, and was inadvertently held. The memerandum would further state that rok this Agency does not know at what point the mail was opened. “Attachments: 114 Items a2 secant enres wovomt Shc 2
ts 1 ¢ ” * tT a fa) ty “J w mi] jan, Gh ‘ GECRET SENGITIVE NOFORN 1 U.S. Registered Mail/Return Receipt 65 Post Cards 25 Letters 2d ~-The person who brought the letters to Kalaria, the supervisor of the summar employee who actually found then, was known to be an Angleton loyalist, and Kalaris could see a trap unfolding in front of him if he mishandled the matter. The deliverer could be expected to tell Angleton just what was done with the letters, and Angleton to find waya to exploit any i11 conceived decisions. After due deliberation, the staff of the Senate committee was infermed, and on 16 July, not quite two weeks after the initial memorandum on this subject, the DCI sent the mail te the Postmaster General under cover of a letter explaining the situation. The Postmaster General in turn gent a copy of this letter, along with the actual mail and a letter of his own, to each addressee. The Postmaster General's letter referred to "apparent interception and acknowledged retention of this mail by the CIA," and deseribed the matter as “a serious violation of your rights" and “abuse of the mails."* In due course some of the recipients wrote letters to the DCI asking whether CIA had dossiers on them. . In April a folder with some/MORINE, material was found in an R&A safe and delivered to McCoy, who, believing that he had stumbled upon an overlooked vein of counterintelligence gold, brought the matter to Kalaris's attention. MORINE in fact had not been overlooked by Angleton, but this was not apparant at the time. The discovery of this folder led to a memorandum to Nelson a few ro& days later, entitled “Skeletons in the CIOPS Closet, * © 180-75, 15 August 1975
mam zlllUetlChlllCUrFllUParllUMlCUClCree Cel ee Li Lig e sSEP. 28.1998 fF 3: 36PM A . NO. 279 P.17 ‘ SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN the etaff, on its own and without coordination with the 2 division, had passed ta a copy of a FIss ° containing division-controllad NOFORN information. Paper and Records: Disposal and Reintearation The paper-and-receords problem wae high on the agenda of issues that needed to be addressed. The quantity that the Angleton vaults and safes contained was almost overwhelming, and much of this had never been made available outside the staff. Integration of this uniqua data inte the DO records system not only made common sense; it was an obvious prerequisite to the staff rejoining the directorate. Kalaris had ne problem in principle with the concept of keeping certain information within the staff, as SE did with ite [AEsTORAGE] system, but the Angleton team had gone everboard. Whether for reasons of bureaucratic style or fear of penetration of the Agency, information of all kinds and from all kinds of sources had been held privately. All this had first ta be reviewed ta identify what was appropriate to retain and what was not, and the appropriate then made retrievable. In the wake of the Rockefeller Commission investigation and the Church and Pike committee hearings, the Agency and the DO were busy writing regulations and providing guidelines to operating elements on what was and was not proper activity, particularly vis-a-vis US persons. For the CI Staff, thie heavily inwelved definitions of subjects and activities that merited staff attention. Executive  ° % Orders would later provide a framevork, albeit often maddeningly imprecise, for these questions, but the first of those addressing US foreign intelligence activitites, E.0. SECRET seuererve NOFORN Yo ye.
14-00000 4 ‘ ‘SEP.28.1998 3:36PM A NO. 279 P.18 rd 3 ‘  * . BBCREP SENSITIVE NOFORN 11905, was not issued until February 1976.* fn the meanwhile, advice from the Hill and the lawyers supplied the framework. And there appeared to be hundreds, perhaps theusands of files in the Angleton staff that nad been created and maintained according to criteria, e.g., anticommunism, that did not fit these guidelines. Establishment of a quideline that counterintelligence flies were not to be established and maintained solely on the basis of items in the press provided fer elimination of a large percentage of the material that had been collected by the Angleton staff, prominent among this being files on Henry Kiesinger, W. Averell Harriman, and some 30-40 US congressmen, among others. Common sense provided other working guidelines such as, for example, the simplistic role of thumb: if a file has some linkage to reality, retain it; if not, destroy it. People from RID were brought in to help decide what should go into the overall records system, and what did not belong there. Some of them effectively noved inte the staff. And they were net the only outsiders to do this. In July 1975 the Department of Justice sent some lawyers to review the HTLINGUAL material, and when they discovered that there were 27 boxes of it in one of the etaff vaults it was decided that the best place for them to- do their work would be right there. Three desks were set up for them in the vault. Some statisties from monthly reports at the time give a glimpse of the Augean task of dealing with all of this paper and records. ~~ January 1976: Five Branch personnel spent 2-1/2 days reviewing all files held in the branch for a count of | ‘ * Signed by President Gerald R. Ford, February 18, 1976. - aw SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORK
SEP. 28.1998 ee vr 3:37PM A NO. 279 P.19 how many of these filee were on US citizens. Total count was 1,018 files on Americans. ~~ March 1976: All (41 linear feet) Golitsyn file material held in records center hag been recalled and a xeview begun. In May six more feet were acquired from SE. -- July: CI/RG&A Index currently contains about 255,000 ecards, down over 11,000 in last ten monthe. =~ August: Golitsyn material nas now been consolidated; about 16 linear faet have been destroyed. -~ September: Approximately 40,000 cards vere destroyed; they duplicated a more complete index maintained by SE/CI. ‘es= Qcteber: CI/R&A index has been purged ef all cards duplicated in DO main index--over 12,000 cards were removad and destroyed. -- February 1977: Four ISG analysts were aasigned to R&A to assist in the processing and integration of CI Staff records into the DO central systen. The “HONETOL" files appalled the new CI staff in their numbers and, as they were read, their scope and the hollowness of the reads upon which they had been built.+* HONETOL had not yet become natorlous to the outside world, but inside it was perceived as a problem of major proportions. If, on the one hand, these files actually * The term “HONETOL" meant Golitayn leads to a penetration of the United States--CIA as well as other US institutions. This led to twe kinds of files: the leads themselves, as Golitsyn provided and des¢ribed them (e.g., a file on the lead “Sasha"); and files on suspects, i.e., persons suspected of being the subject of a lead. Actual leads were _ Very few; suspects were very many. ‘ S& SECRET SENSITIVE NOPORN
Lid P.28.1998 “4 3:39PM A NO.279 ‘ SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN contained evidence of a penetration of CIA, this clearly was of vital impertance. If, on the other hand, they did not, _it was important that this be recognized and the files and augspicions appropriately dealt with. (Gurian Fox} a lawyer by education who joined the staff in late summer 1975, was assigned to study these files. A procedure was developed whereby he reviewed each one by one, and prepared a summary of its contents. This want forward to Kalaris with, in each instance, a recommendation on the cover sheat for disposition. On file after file these cover sheets ended up saying the same thing: that the file had been reviewed, that the conclusion had been reached that there was nothing of merit in it, and the file should be destoyed. The review ef the file on Richard Kovich, for example, which was eight pages long, was dated 22 December 1975.* Kalaris, concurring, sent it te ADDO Blee with a handwritten note that the material in this case would be packaged and held with instructions that it should be destroyed as soon as the Senate released CIA from its embargo on destruction, and that the summary memo and cover sheet would constitute the only future recerd. The HONETOL files received steady but not priority attention. It took somewhat over a year for [rox]eo make his way through all of then. Nothing of merit was found in any of them. A special approach was developed to get the MORINE/ data inte central indices. As a result of the compartmentation applied to, MORINE’ in the Angleton staff, much of the existing MORINE information was squirreled away and not immediately appreciated. The rejuvenated exploitation program produced a flead of [zrtarry] correspondence with field stations, but this was slow to yield indexable material. It wagé not until the end of 1975 that a focused 4 * Richard Kovich Was one of the threa CIA staff officers most eeverely affected by the HONETOL witch-hunt. SECRET GENSITIVE NOFORN P.26
14-00000 ica “ & @e ome oem i—|1m = --~ SEP.28.1998 iis) a8) ua at D 5 } uJ Ww v ce] me ’ ’ GECRET SENGITIVE HOFrORN analytical effort on MORINE got underway. Beginning then with the cassette material nternational Department” trainee names), and later with country summary reports when 1 F analysie and liaison feedback fleshed out an understanding of GRU residency personnel and operations, ,MORINE’ data were provided by the staff to SE Division, which in turn conveyed them on to RID under SE Division document (SX) numbers as [AEstoracy information. Names of GRU officers, code names and true mames (Where known) of agente and developmentals, support assets, etc. were indexed in this fashion. Res i 4 The Kalaris staff inherited responsibility for a hana@ful of defectors and certain contract personnel who had been working for the Angleton staff. This responsibility Was not particularly welcomed, but it had to be dealt with. yf The defectors were Golitsyn, Nosenko, Deryabin, and L Jinterzigence officer by the [2 name of | aso Known as/mipivot/1/ The Soviets ware well known, at least by reputation, to the SE alumni on the staff, but the was a total surprise. They had never heard of him.* had approached CIA through Angleton and asked for assistance in arranging the defection and resettlement of + ~GRIGE SE (STSS] HOT BES avare of defection at the time, and had deduced, and ultimately obtained confirmation from the DDO, that Angleton had arranged to bring him to the United States and had hin squirreled away. e
VF "b 733PM 4, A . NO BGECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN . This would suggest that Angleton may have lacked the epportunity that others had had to cbserve the kinds of behavior Soviet defectors have displayed in sorting out who the important players are in matters affecting their future, and figuring out how te deal with them.« -=In the eyes of some who knew him, Angleton viewed himself more as chief of an operational entity than of a etaff. Few gave him high marks as an effective staff, as opposed to operations, officer. His secret travels in Weatern Europe, not to mention to Israel, to meet with senior liaison effielals with whom he had developed confidential relationships constituted a form of independent operational activity. The proposal, ultimately stillborn, in 1965 for Angleton to develop special counterintelligence units in Vietnam*s @Qieplayed certain parallelg with his conduct of counterintelligence abroad as Chief of the CI Staff in the way in which the local station would be effectively cut out and command channel and communications would run direct to counterintelligence headquarters in Washington. The proposed special counterintelligence (SCI) units for Vietnam were modeled after SCI units employed by X-2, the counterintelligence arm of the wartime OSS--where Angleton began his intelligence career. Perhaps those early experiences shaped in some way Angleton's hater preference fer conducting counterintelligence--by himself, without involvement ef the area divisions and stations. --.,apd What To Do About It: Game plan The Plan In assessing the state of affairs in the staff, it did, * Angleton may have had gome exposure, probably during the 1950s, ta pre-War (1938) KGA defector Aleksandr Orlov. *¢°As Geecribed in Clevaland ¢. Cram's history of the CI Staff (to 1974),[Vol.x, pp. 1004 ff: 27 an a SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN ee ted Wyse
14-00000 _o. SEP. 28.1998 & . ! tf 3:48PM A SECRET GENSITIVE NOFORN NO. 279 P.23 6treamline our procedures." By 1976 the office of the Executive Officer of the Staff included a Privacy Act Section with four positions in addition to a three-person Records and Registry Section. (FOIA and Privacy Act requests were handled together.) But this by no means solved the problem. Yn the fall of 1977, as DO ceiling and personnel reductions were being meted out and the staff was trying to gear itself to getting aleng with lese, the DDO was advised that the staff's Privacy Act Section was 60 strained and its personnel under so much preséure that henceferth it would not accept deadlines impesed by elements outside the staff. When requirements were received, the section would advise the requester how much time would be required to complete the work. But norma) FOYA and Privacy Act requests were not all; there were also specialty requests that had te be met. All had the common denominator ef the staffta unique files and records. These included such matters ae: ~~ FOIA requests for information concerning Lee Harvey Oswald.** Handling these required the creation of a task force of 13 operations officers and analysts, plus clerical personnel, and their full-time efforts for over a month. -- Requests for interviews and/or information from the Senate and House Select Intelligence Committees, and the Department of Justice. ~~ A review of the Resenberg case by a Federal court, which caused problems with regard to related VENONA # CI 131-75, 9 July 75 ** Nosenko's assertion that he was familiar with the KGB's assegemant ef and involvement with Oswald in the Soviet Union had led to endless debriefing, analysis, and cross- checking research on this subject. 67 ue SECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN
te SEP. 28. 1998 3:41PM A GECRET SENSITIVE NOFORN NO.279 = P.2a t 4 United States: “In each case you open a fila on thera must be a demonstrable CI interest. Please assure that thie 4s guideline is followed meticulously." oul & e- Was charged with the } f conduct of and coordination on double agent operations abroad. Since the vast majority of DA cases were run by the US military services, the FBI, or--in some instancas-- “foreign-liaison services, the branch was very heavily a coordinator rather than active runner of operations. [area Operations ZS, -= Was charged with coordination with the area divisions on matters of CI interest, and with stimulating CI disciplines and practices in the area divisions and field stations. The centerpiece of the branch's activity was management and conduct of the CI Survey program. Consisting itself only of the branch ehief and two clericals, the branch staffed its survey teans with detailees from the area divisions and CI Staff officers borrowed from other branches of the staff, both Ops and R&A. ene anch -- Was charged with operations dasigned to counter and disrupt the activities abroad of foreign intelligence services inimical to US y# interests. | | an LA Division officer who was brought in to the staff byl sito head the branch, had had considerable experience in CA operations, and the branch's activities reflected this background. Virtually | all Rad a clear CA character, | Primary orientation was toward Latin America, with heavy as focus on terrorist organizations and activities. [ operations tended to be highly imaginative, often complex, ] Fi SECRET SENHITIVE NOPORN /
14-00000 5 SEP 26 °96 65:20PM ; . P.2 “4 . @ BCRET / NOFORN PAPER: THE IMS TEAM FINALLY GOES HOME aad In May 1980 the IMS analyst group detailed to the cI Staff to deal with the paper inherited from the Angleton Staff finally completed its work and returned to IMS. In all, during the preceding four and a half years some 600 feet of CI Staff files had been reviewed, about 375 feet by IMS and 225 feet by CI Staff personnel The Analysis Group main index had been reduced from 500,000 cards in 1975 to 28,000. DERYABIN RETIRES Peter (Petr) Deryabin retired in January 1981 on the eve ef his 60th birthday. One of the early group of KGB officers to come to the West following the death of Stalin in 1953, he had defected in Vienna in 1954. Since that time he had been continually associated with, and in effect a ward of the CTI Staff. For a number of years he, along with other defectors, . 14 SECRET / NOFORN