MH/CHAOS

Aldhizer is also quoted in Riebling’s book as saying that CIA gave a low priority to Stokely Carmichael’s presence in Africa because Aldhizer never received any information, accusing us of never disseminating it to the FBI. I remember that we did disseminate whatever information we collected on Carmichael and his activities, particularly in Conakry, Ghana, where he eventually settled, took the name Kwame Touré, and died on November 15, 1998. The amount of information was minimal, but Ghana was a difficult working environment.

Much ado was made over the severance of contact between FBI and CIA, when Hoover became upset because CIA would not divulge the name of the FBI agent who provided some information to one of our officers. Helms said:

I felt that the breakdown over the Colorado affair was quite unnecessary, but this was, obviously, in a fit of petulance on Mr. Hoover’s part, and, like many things that come as a fit of petulance, it was short-lived. It wasn’t very many days before we were back to the status quo, but the papers had been going back and forth, and people were talking informally, and the work of the two agencies were not impeded. A lot has been made out of it. It is one of those episodes that are easy to dramatize, but the working level in both agencies kept things on an even keel.²

Despite the disruption of liaison between the Agency and the FBI in the spring of 1970, there was no such break between SOG and Bureau officers working the same issues. This was a delicate task. I remember sending a cable to the Bureau in response to an FBI requirement. After receiving the message, the Bureau agent called me on the telephone to request that I or any of my colleagues refrain from putting a reference line on the messages, in both cable and memo forms. Usually the reference line would resemble the following: “FBI cable or memorandum, dated such and such, subject such and such.” The Bureau agent said that Hoover sometimes went to the cable room and pulled messages directly off the system. If he saw one from CIA referencing an FBI request, he would be furious and probably fire the special agent who tasked CIA or exile the agent to the infamous Fargo, North Dakota.

As to our relationship with the FBI, we cooperated operationally along three lines. The first area of cooperation concerned exploitation of FBI sources, with the participation of our officers in the briefing and debriefing of FBI New Left and radical extremist sources that traveled abroad as part of their undercover activities. From January 1971 until June 1972 we participated in eighteen such briefings or debriefings. Another five FBI assets were set up to meet our needs for travel, including a trip to a major international anti-war conference abroad.

Our second area of cooperation was FBI-provided sources. In a few cases, either in response to our request for a specific type of source for long-term use abroad, or because an FBI informant who had done a good job now asked to work abroad, the FBI made available its U.S. sources. In all, a total of three FBI sources became active abroad under CIA control and direction. Most of the others were not particularly fruitful. From the FBI’s viewpoint, however, we were equally limited in providing assets to them.

We disseminated collected information in response to general standing FBI, Secret Service, and Immigration and Naturalization Service requirements, but most of our information went only to the FBI. We disseminated an average of ninety reports to the FBI every month with roughly 20–25 percent being responsive to specific FBI requirements. We evaluated our disseminated products by regularly checking with the FBI on their adequacy and relevance.

In return, the FBI provided extensive reporting on individuals and groups of interest, and CI leads. This added up to approximately one thousand reports from the FBI every month. Most of the voluminous information provided was at the FBI’s initiative. The FBI was also responsive to our requests for specific information, including by teletype if urgently needed, to further facilitate our CI investigative and/or operational effort, and to satisfy foreign liaison service requests when it was to our advantage to do so. We kept track of these reports in our computer database.

Our record keeping on domestic individuals was bitterly criticized by the Commission and committees. It was basically a congressional and American press firestorm over nothing. Strong CI analysis is heavily dependent on building and maintaining a database on various subjects or individuals. This database allowed us to possibly identify trends correctly. Without such a database and resultant files we would have been unable to provide the White House with a response to their question of foreign manipulation or control of American New Left and black militant activities.

Access to raw operational traffic is often necessary in CI analysis, where the very essence of what is being analyzed is operational in nature. The need for our maintaining files and a database was to be able to access this information in-house, rather than housing this information in the DDO or the DCI. To answer the president we needed the information readily available.

Of course, civil libertarians would not agree with this rationale. Yet, it is one of the ironies of history that Americans, who were supposedly aghast by this collection of information, have no alarm about the amount of personal information that is available to anyone today on the Internet, embedded on credit cards, and contained in other public databases. In 2004 the General Accounting Office “surveyed 128 federal departments and agencies and found that fifty-two were using or planning to implement, 199 data-mining programs, with 131 already operational.”³

Overall we benefited greatly from our FBI liaison. It was very effective until Sam Papich ceased his daily FBI visits to CIA headquarters. His visits afforded us an opportunity to explore informally operational or information developments, which we were able to handle expeditiously or effectively. Papich’s visits were also supplemented occasionally by direct discussions (which also ceased in 1970) with David Ryan, chief, Special Operations Division, FBI headquarters. We wanted to reestablish this direct liaison with the FBI, and in addition we wanted to establish direct liaison with the chiefs of the radical and New Left sections in FBI headquarters. We never did. Instead, we used FBI liaison visits to CI staff ’s front office to conduct business.

When we collected CI information of exceptional importance, it was prepared for DCI signature and then sent, as appropriate, to the White House, the secretary of state, the attorney general, and to FBI director Hoover. The principal White House addressee was John Dean, who had been given special cognizance over domestic affairs. When relevant, the information was also sent to the assistant to the president for national security affairs. We had an obligation to get our analysis to consumers who benefited from it, while taking appropriate care to protect our sources and methods.

The one special problem we had with the FBI concerned its legal attachés abroad. There was no written agreement governing the activities of the legal attachés in dealing with foreign liaison services on the collection of information on foreign exploitation of domestic U.S. dissidence and extremism. The DCI had implemented a policy that CIA was the instrument of the U.S. government in this field with foreign liaison services. In actual practice, the FBI levied pertinent requirements directly upon its own legal attachés, who generally would not come to the Agency for assistance.

This arrangement sometimes caused major problems. In one case the legal attaché in a country contacted that country’s security service to obtain information from it. At the same time, and in response to an FBI requirement, CIA contacted another intelligence service of the same country to obtain this information. The embarrassment came when both services decided independently to surreptitiously enter the apartment of an individual to see if they could obtain the information. Both services arrived at the door of the individual simultaneously. Needless to say, neither service was happy with either the FBI or us. An informal agreement was then reached, under which the Agency handled FBI requirements in the New Left and black militant field. In countries where there was no legal attaché or in situations where several countries were involved, including countries in which there was a legal attaché, CIA was to take the action. Unilateral collection efforts were always requested of CIA, however, whether or not there was a legal attaché.

Within the Agency, our collection program was viewed also as an integral part of the recruitment program of China, Vietnam, Cuba, and Soviet Bloc operations. Agents who had an American “movement” background or who had known connections with the movement were useful as access agents against targets from these areas. These access agents could obtain biographic and personality data, discern vulnerabilities and susceptibilities, and develop operationally exploitable relationships with these recruitment targets. In return, our assets were attractive to these targets because of their connections with and/ or knowledge of the movement. Thus, the Chinese Communists or the North Vietnamese, for example, would seek information or would be willing to engage in discussions about the status and future of the movement with such assets. Information derived from these contacts was of substantial CI interest in our collection program.

Of course, Hersh and the Times continued their onslaught on CIA by quoting various sources and allegations. Consider the following:

^■ One Times source, an individual with reported access to firsthand knowledge of MHCHAOS in Hersh’s December 22, 1974, article, took sharp exception to the official suggestion that such activities were the result of legitimate CI needs. “Look, that’s how it started,” he said. “They were looking for evidence of foreign involvement in the antiwar movement. But that’s not how it ended up. This just grew and mushroomed internally.” We never mushroomed into anything. Far from it; we never achieved our approved manpower strength.

^■ Several days later the New York Times reported that Angleton denied “he was in any way involved in the alleged domestic surveillance.”⁴ While Angleton knew in general what we were doing, he was not directly involved in any way with our day-to-day activities.

^■ This source and other knowledgeable persons believed Helms permitted Angleton to continue the domestic operations because of the power Angleton wielded within CIA. “One answer . . . by a CIA insider, is simply that the power of Mr. Angleton, whose CI division is responsible for guarding the agency against foreign infiltration, was such that he could institute such illegal activities on his own, with no one in the CIA—not even Richard Helms—able to stop him.”⁵

A more reasonable explanation for Helms’ close relationship with Angleton can be traced to the Allen Dulles era in CIA. At that time Helms was considered a logical choice to be the DDP, but Dulles chose Richard M. Bissell instead. The Plans Directorate divided into two camps: one backing Bissell and the other supporting Helms. Angleton supported Helms in all the battles. Loyalty is an important asset, and Helms never forgot the men who backed him.

That said, the DCI has the legal power to fire any CIA officer violating the law, or for any other unspecified reason. It is true that after Helms became DCI he could have removed or stripped Angleton of some of his power, but he didn’t do so. Besides his operational and management experience, Helms was also a politician who recognized that any attempt to downgrade Angleton’s power was fraught with danger. Over the years Angleton had built a solid base, not only within the Agency but also within the intelligence community, and Helms recognized that moving against Angleton would cause him political and personal problems. In addition, Helms claimed that one of his biggest nightmares was the possibility of a spy within CIA. Under Angleton’s reign there was no significant penetration of CIA, and that gave Helms a degree of comfort.

If the New York Times’ “CIA insider” did exist, he might be one of many in the Agency that saw Angleton as an aloof, intellectually arrogant officer with a zeal and sense of purpose that allowed him to run roughshod over any opposition within CIA. As Angleton’s power grew, so did the virulence of his opponents, including Colby who would later become DCI.

When the Hersh article surfaced, Colby, who was by then DCI, decided it was the best time to tell Angleton that he would no longer be in CI. Colby told him that he wanted his own man in there. Colby offered Angleton a job writing the history of the CI staff, or any other project to keep him involved, but Angleton refused and left CIA. Colby took this action because he deemed it the right time—if CIA was going to take any blame for Hersh’s article, then Colby didn’t want Angleton and his problems around. To the outside world, it appeared that Colby fired Angleton because of his involvement in MHCHAOS.

Actually, we were fairly autonomous within the CI staff. Although nominally under Angleton, Ober reported to DCI Helms. Helms said:

I then made SOG an appendage of the Counterintelligence Staff but not subordinate to Angleton. Political dissidence was scarcely a counterintelligence responsibility, but because the President had directed us to sail so closely to the wind, I wanted to keep this activity compartmented from other operational activity and firmly under my control. All of the Agency’s MHCHAOS reporting went through me. Jim did not ask for this arrangement nor did I consult him before leaving this sensitive baby on the stoop beside his door.⁶

As a participant in drafting the unit’s report to the White House, I saw the routing sheet used on our report. Ober signed off on the routing sheet and the next person to receive it was Helms, before it was delivered to John Dean at the White House. In addition, all correspondence to the FBI and other government agencies went directly from our office to them. Angleton was never listed as an information address on any of our correspondence.

Helms gave MHCHAOS top priority and the White House favored it. All information that poured into the office was given maximum operational security. At first we were housed in separate offices on the second floor of the old CIA headquarters building. We later moved to a vaulted office in the basement. Within the vaulted office we had another vault where most of the files were kept. Active files used on a daily basis were kept in individual safes under our desks or in four-drawer office safes. Despite its being in a vaulted area, officers in the unit were not allowed to leave documents out on their desks when they locked up for the evening. If they did they were given a security violation.

One thing Hersh did get completely correct, but contradicted himself with his allegation of Angleton running the show, was that Ober reported to Helms. “Ober had unique and very confidential access to Helms,” a former CIA officer said. “I always assumed he was mucking about with Americans who were abroad and then would come back people like the Black Panthers.” The article further insinuated that this official distrusted CIA’s bureaucratic procedures under Helms and suggested that Helms’ inclination for secrecy apparently kept the most complete intelligence information from being sent to the White House.

I previously pointed out that Angleton was consulted about housing MHCHAOS in CI staff and providing space for its officers. Other than probably an occasional briefing or a memorandum from Ober, Angleton wasn’t interested in the mundane, day-to-day work of the unit. Angleton had other, more important items on his agenda and particular projects that were of interest solely to him. If anything, Angleton merely saw us as another way to discern if the Soviets were trying to manipulate the anti–Vietnam War movement in the United States to their own advantage.