Opinion ID: 409582
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Operation CHAOS

Text: 4 The first program, designated by the CIA as Operation CHAOS, was an intelligence-gathering activity conducted by the CIA originally at the request of President Johnson which sought to determine the extent to which foreign governments or political organizations 8 exerted influence on or provided support to domestic critics of the government's Vietnam policies. 9 CHAOS was begun in 1967 by appellee Helms, who at the time was Director of Central Intelligence. 10 Appellee Angleton, Chief of Counterintelligence for the CIA, selected appellee Ober to head what became known as the Special Operations Group of the CIA's Counterintelligence staff. The Special Operations Group was responsible for the conduct of Operation CHAOS. 5 Over the course of several years, Operation CHAOS produced six reports for the White House and some thirty-four reports for cabinet-level officials, dealing with the subject of foreign influence on the domestic antiwar movement. In the normal course of its operations, CHAOS also produced a steady stream of reports to the FBI and other agencies detailing the results of its various intelligence activities with respect to the antiwar movement. 11 6 Discovery conducted by plaintiffs in the district court revealed that among the several thousand computerized files it maintained on Americans involved in various aspects of the antiwar movement, 12 Operation CHAOS ultimately developed files on 15 of the individual appellants and the five appellant organizations. 13 The gravamen of plaintiffs' claims with respect to Operation CHAOS concerned the several known methods whereby the CIA compiled information on plaintiffs' activities. 7 First, CHAOS from the outset called upon CIA stations located abroad to report on the antiwar activities of U. S. citizens travelling in their areas. This reporting comprised both the routine provision of information thought by the local stations to be relevant to CHAOS requirements, and the gathering of particular intelligence at the specific request of the CHAOS office. Surveillance of Americans while abroad was conducted both through direct observation (physical surveillance) and with the aid of electronic eavesdropping equipment. 14 CIA agents abroad also requested the assistance of friendly local intelligence agencies, or liaison services, in maintaining electronic and physical surveillance of American subjects. The use of local liaison services facilitated both the conduct of normal surveillance and most important, (the) development of informants or ... agent penetrations within suspect groups operating on foreign soil with whom Americans may have had contact. 15 8 Second, beginning in late 1969, the CHAOS office developed its own network of informants for the purposes of infiltrating various foreign antiwar groups located in foreign countries that might have had ties to domestic antiwar activity. Although the principal focus of such infiltration was foreign groups, it is now known that informants destined for such assignments were directed to infiltrate antiwar circles within the United States for the purpose of gaining knowledge of their operations and credibility as antiwar activists. In the course of these preliminary associations, CHAOS agents apparently supplied information on the activities of domestic antiwar groups, and this information was placed in the general CHAOS data base. 16 9 Third, Operation CHAOS made use of the facilities of other ongoing CIA surveillance programs. These included: (1) the CIA letter-opening program, which was directed at letters passing between the United States and the Soviet Union, and involved the examination of correspondence to and from individuals or organizations placed on a watchlist; 17 (2) the Domestic Contact Service, a CIA office which solicits foreign intelligence information overtly from willing sources within the United States; 18 (3) the CIA's Project 2, which was directed at the infiltration of foreign intelligence targets by agents posing as dissident sympathizers and which, like CHAOS, had placed agents within domestic radical organizations for the purposes of training and establishment of dissident credentials; 19 (4) the CIA's Project MERRIMAC, operated by the Office of Security, which was designed to infiltrate domestic antiwar and radical organizations thought to pose a threat to the security of CIA property and personnel; 20 and (5) Project RESISTANCE, also a creature of the Office of Security, which gathered information on domestic groups without any actual infiltration. 21 10 From its inception, CHAOS also regularly received information from the FBI on that agency's investigations of the domestic antiwar movement. 22