Operation CHAOS

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The Church Committee of the US Congress, headed by Senator Frank Church , investigated illegal activities by US intelligence agencies and the FBI from 1975 onwards. Church concluded that "the growing abuse of intelligence agencies reflects a larger, more fundamental problem in our central institutions."
Excerpt from the investigation report of the Church Commission

Operation CHAOS was a covert operation by the American secret service CIA to monitor and spy on 300,000 opponents of the Vietnam War and civil rights groups within the United States. The background was that the various civil rights and protest movements of the 1968 movement in the USA were presumed to be controlled by Soviet secret agents . Although this could quickly be refuted by the espionage activities, the activities were maintained for years and in some cases even intensified.

The action was illegal because the CIA is not allowed to operate domestically and the surveillance is against the United States Constitution. It was exposed in 1974 by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh . Hersh's article had been instrumental in the establishment of an investigative commission of the US Congress about illegal activities of the CIA, the so-called Church Committee .

The operation was directed by Richard Ober . During the operation, u. a. thousands of citizens are recorded in an electronic database ('computerized file') called 'HYDRA' and their travel movements are recorded. The CIA also received information from other authorities and even from foreign intelligence services, such as the FBI and friendly European secret services.

The NSA provided a watch list with tens of thousands of names of US citizens who "endanger national security" because of their position on the Vietnam War .

At about the same time, a similar circle of target persons and groups was actively infiltrated as part of the FBI's COINTELPRO operation and prevented from further political activity using, in some cases, illegal methods.

Although CHAOS and similar programs to illegally spy on US citizens ( Domestic Spying ) did not show any signs of influence of foreign powers, in particular the Soviet Union , on the civil rights and protest movements in several interim reports to various high-ranking US government members , this met with strong skepticism two consecutive US presidents - each stepping up the scope of the surveillance measures to be absolutely certain that the reported failure was actually correct.

Timely or concurrent operations by the CIA

The following CIA operations (selection) took place near or at the same time as Operation Chaos (most of them by the Office of Security):

  • HTLINGUAL (HGLINGUAL)
  • Project 2
  • Project MERRIMAC
  • Project RESISTANCE
  • Domestic Contact Service

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Final report of the Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, United States Senate: together with additional, supplemental, and separate views . April 26, 1976, original quote: "the growth of intelligence abuses reflects a more general failure of our basic institutions."
  2. ↑ a b NSA: America's Big Ear . In: Der Spiegel . No. 8 , 1989 ( online ). /
  3. ^ A b CIA Intelligence Collection about Americans: CHAOS and the Office of Security. (PDF; 4 MB) Report of the Church Committee of Inquiry , p. 681