Documents / FOIA release

CIA Activities in the U.S.

Central Intelligence Agency · 1974-12-24 · 76 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This is a letter dated 24 December 1974 from CIA Director W. E. Colby to the President, with annexes attached. It responds to a New York Times article about CIA domestic intelligence activity. The letter denies that the Agency ran a "massive" domestic effort. It traces a counterintelligence program on foreign links with American dissidents, which ran from 1967 until it was ended in March 1974, and admits improper actions such as mail opening, break-ins and the surveillance of reporters. The attached memoranda restrict such activities.

  • p. 16 …I expect that area divisions and senior staffs will be fully cooperative in this effort, both…
  • p. 17 …It is also important to ensure that a cooperative and supportive relationship exists between the Office…
  • p. 22 …the Spring of 1970, the F9I has cooperated operationally with the Special Operations Group along three…
  • p. 34 …Records of the individuals and organizations cooperating with the Agency are maintained as a necessary practical…
  • p. 37 …The Agency has cooperated with and made available to the appropriate law enforcement bodies information about…
  • p. 62 …citizens to cooperate with CIA in its foreign intelligence mission is an appropriate action.
  • p. 67 …will be advised, and the Agency will cooperate with the appropriate authorities in the investigation of…
  • p. 72 …appropriate law enforcement bodies and CIA will cooperate with them in any action required which does…

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5. A formidable obstacle to Mr. Ober at present is the backlog of undigested raw information at his disposal. In addition to assigning skilled analysts to deal with the flow of information, there is an obvious need for introducing expanded, sophisticated computer support. I understand that the Office of Computer Services possesses on-line capabilities and other facilities which not only would provide vastly improved information storage and retrieval but also affords the possibility of a data link with certain other elements of the security community. I would urge the earliest utilization of this capability. A rational combination of able officers and computers ought also to foster the twin virtues of holding Mr. Ober's TO to an acceptable level and minimizing the number of individuals with access to sensitive intelligence and operational information.

6. It is also important to ensure that a cooperative and supportive relationship exists between the Office of Security and Mr. Ober's Group. I expect that information collected by the Office of Security as part of its normal security mission, but which has a bearing on the targets of the Group, will be provided to the Group. Office of Security checks with other domestic repositories of information, involving targets of interest to the Group, should be closely coordinated with it.

Richard Helms Director

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About this file

FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 76 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.