Documents / FOIA release
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.
“Office of Special Investigations”2 pages
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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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is under it. The text was read from the page images by an OCR model; expect the odd misread word. 76 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.