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
Read from the scan by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word.
SUBJECT: Restrictions on Operational Lists on Americans The accumulation of operational leads to Americans with access to significant foreign targets must be conducted in a fashion which clearly avoids the charge that black lists of any sort are being accumulated by CIA. If such listings cannot be made by CIA in a non-misunderstandable manner, arrangements should be made for the service to be performed by the FBI or other service which can legitimately do this function. This particularly refers to matters such as mail watches, overseas telephone call watch lists, doctors who studied abroad, etc.
Not linked to a story yet.
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.