Serious Question, re: Lyndon Johnson & Vietnam

Domestic Surveillance:

The History of Operation CHAOS

by Verne Lyon
from Covert Action Information Bulletin, Summer 1990
Verne Lyon is a former CIA undercover operative
who is now a director of the Des Moines Hispanic Ministry.

For over fifteen years, the CIA, with assistance from numerous government agencies, conducted a massive illegal domestic covert operation called Operation CHAOS. It was one of the largest and most pervasive domestic surveillance programs in the history of this country. Throughout the duration of CHAOS, the CIA spied on thousands of U.S. citizens. The CIA went to great lengths to conceal this operation from the public while every president from Eisenhower to Nixon exploited CHAOS for his own political ends.

One can trace the beginnings of Operation CHAOS to 1959 when Eisenhower used the CIA to "sound out" the exiles who were fleeing Cuba after the triumph of Fidel Castro's revolution. Most were wealthy educated professionals looking for a sympathetic ear in the United States. The CIA sought contacts in the exile community and began to recruit many of them for future use against Castro. This U.S.-based recruiting operation was arguably illegal, although Eisenhower forced FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to accept it as a legitimate CIA function. Congress and the public showed no interest in who was recruiting whom.

The CIA's Office of Security was monitoring other groups at this time and had recruited agents within different emigré organizations. (1) The CIA considered this a normal extension of its authorized infiltration of dissident groups abroad even though the activity was taking place within the U.S. Increased use of the CIA's contacts and agents among the Cuban exiles became commonplace until mass, open recruitment of mercenaries for what was to be the ill-fated Bay of Pigs invasion was no longer a secret in southern Florida. It was no secret to Fidel Castro either, as we later found out.

This activity led the CIA to establish proprietary companies, fronts, and covers for its domestic operations. So widespread did they become that President Johnson allowed the then CIA Director, John McCone, to create in 1964 a new super-secret branch called the Domestic Operations Division (DOD), the very title of which mocked the explicit intent of Congress to prohibit CIA operations inside the U.S. (2) This disdain for Congress permeated the upper echelons of the CIA. Congress could not hinder or regulate something it did not know about, and neither the President nor the Director of the CIA was about to tell them. Neither was J. Edgar Hoover, even though he was generally aware that the CIA was moving in on what was supposed to be exclusive FBI turf. (3)

In the classified document creating the DOD, the scope of its activities was to "exercise centralized responsibility for the direction, support, and coordination of clandestine operational activities within the United States...." One of those was burglarizing foreign diplomatic sites at the request of the National Security Agency (NSA). The CIA also expanded the role of its "quasi-legal" Domestic Contact Service (DCS), an operation designed to brief and debrief selected American citizens who had traveled abroad in sensitive areas of intelligence interest. Because the interviews took place in airports between the aircraft and customs and immigration control, the operations were not technically considered domestic. the DCS also helped with travel control by monitoring the arrivals and departures of U.S. nationals and foreigners. In addition, the CIA reached out to former agents, officers, contacts, and friends to help it run its many fronts, covers, and phony corporations. This "old boy network" provided the CIA with trusted people to carry out its illegal domestic activities.

CONTINUED...

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