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.
“Cooper”8 pages
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In 1972, with the approval of the Director, the Executive Director issued an internal memorandum to senior CIA officials describing the program in order to clarify its scope and to invite reports of any departures from its policy: "To carry out its responsibilities for counter-intelligence, CIA is interested in the activities of foreign nations or intelligence services aimed at the U.S. To the extent that these activities lie outside the U.S., including activities aimed at the U.S. utilizing U.S. citizens or others, they fall within CIA's responsibilities. Responsibility for coverage of the activities within the U.S. lies with the FBI, as an internal security function. CIA's responsibility and authority are limited to the foreign intelligence aspect of the problem, and any action of a law enforcement or internal security nature lies with the FBI or local police forces." (Annex E) On 9 May 1973, the Director issued a bulletin to all employees requesting them to report any indication of any activity they believed might be outside CIA's charter (Annex F). Responses from some employees referred to the counterintelligence program. As a result, on 29 August 1973 the Director issued specific direction to the managers of the program emphasizing that the focus of the program was to be clearly on the foreign organizations and individuals involved in links with American dissidents and only incidentally on the American contacts involved (Annex G). In March 1974 the Director terminated the program and issued specific guidance that any collection of counterintelligence information on Americans would only take place abroad and would be initiated only in response to requests from the FBI or in coordination with it; furthermore, any such information obtained as a by-product of foreign intelligence activities would be reported to the FBI (Annex II). In the course of this program, files were developed on American citizens. The total index of these Americans accounts to 9,944 counterintelligence files. Approximately two-thirds of these consisted of the by-product coverage of the activities outlined above or stenosed from specific requests from the FBI for information on the activities of Americans abroad. One-third consisted of FBI reports on American Communists. We have for the past several months been in the process of
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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.