Counterintelligence in the Turbulent 1960S and 1970S
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CI in the Turbulent 1960s and 1970s CHAPTER 2 Counterintelligence in the Turbulent 1960s and 1970s Introduction The early 1960s was a golden period for American counterintelligence. The FBI and CIA recruited several valuable Soviet intelligence officers, and the CI community benefited from a small number of Soviet defectors. This utopia would not last long. Among the defectors were Anatoliy Golitsyn and Yuriy Nosenko, both of who would eventually be the cause of tremendous embarrassment to the CIA and adversely affect the CI community. Except for one espionage arrest between 1966 and 1975, counterintelligence falls from the American scene. The year 1966 also marked an almost total break in FBI-CIA relations that lasted until 1972. In the mid-to-late 1960s, Vietnam became the dominant intelligence issue and also the rallying call for dissent against the government by young Americans. Widespread violence and civil disorder arose in many cities and on many campuses across the country. President Lyndon Johnson and later President Richard Nixon acted on a number of fronts, including the counterintelligence elements within the intelligence community, to determine who was to blame for the turbulence. Both Presidents believed that foreign influences caused the domestic strife confronting the nation, and each directed the CI Community to determine if America’s enemies were behind the violence. In 1967, the Department of Justice instituted the first in a series of secret units designed to collate and evaluate information concerning the growing domestic disorder. After Nixon’s election, the Justice Department created new units but the President remained dissatisfied. The FBI’s response was to continue to conduct COINTELPRO (Counterintelligence Program) operations against the New Left, the Black Nationalists, and the Right Wing, which were established in the late 1950s and 1960s. Army intelligence conducted its own domestic program, and CIA took action by creating the MHCHAOS (cryptonym used for CIA’s collection of information on American dissidents) operation. All these efforts resulted from a realization by the Johnson and Nixon Administrations that the CI Community had no effective ability to evaluate intelligence on domestic incidents. In the end, the CI community found no evidence of foreign control of American radical groups, and, by the early 1970s each of the agencies began phasing out its 85 CI in the Turbulent 1960s and 1970s programs. The issue, however, stayed alive. DCI James Schlesinger, who was blindsided by not knowing about CIA’s involvement in the break-in of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist office in Los Angeles, was leery of being caught offguard again. To forestall such an event, he ordered all CIA employees to report on any CIA activities that they believed violated the Agency’s charter. On 9 May 1973, the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General gave Schlesinger a list of “potential” activities that could cause embarrassment to the CIA. The list included the Agency’s CI Staff’s participation in the MHCHAOS operation, mail-openings, and the Huston Plan. Two days later, President Nixon named Schlesinger to be Secretary of Defense. The new DCI, William Colby, had to wait until September 1973 to take office and immediately had to resolve other pressing matters. The CI staff’s questionable activities remained dormant. This changed following a December 1974 New York Times article on alleged CIA spying on American citizens. The news article led to the appointment of a presidential commission (the Rockefeller Commission) and two Congressional committees to investigate the charges. Besides CIA, the investigation also looked at the FBI, DoD, and several other agencies. Almost coinciding with the news article was the firing of CIA’s legendary CI Chief, James Jesus Angleton, who served in this position for 20 years. On 18 February 1976, President Gerald Ford issued Executive Order 11905. The new policy guidelines, restrictions on individual agencies, and clarification of intelligence authorities and responsibilities were the result of the Rockefeller Commission’s report. In announcing his order, the President wanted to sidestep any Congressional initiative to regulate the intelligence and counterintelligence communities. The president gave the new DCI, George Bush, only 90 days to implement the new order. The Senate Committee, known as the Church Committee, published its six-volume report on the investigation on 23 April 1976. The House Committee, known as the Pike Committee, also wrote a classified report, which was leaked to and printed by the Village Voice on 12 February 1976. The next crisis to strike US counterintelligence was the discovery of the illegal imprisonment of Soviet defector Nosenko by CIA. The Nosenko case had been a continuous point of contention between the Agency’s CI Staff and the people responsible for recruiting and running operations against the Soviet Union. The case also clouded the bona fides of other Soviet defectors and in-place sources and contributed to the internal questioning by the FBI of the validity of their sources. The revelations of these activities convinced Congress that they needed closer oversight and accountability over the intelligence community. The House of Representatives established the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, and the Senate created the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. 86 CI in the Turbulent 1960s and 1970s On 20 January 1977, Presidential Directive/NSC-2 reorganized the National Security Council System. A review of this reorganization shows no committees or group focusing on counterintelligence. Another Executive Order corrected this oversight. The order created the Special Coordination Committee for Counterintelligence, under the revised National Security Council structure. Early in DCI Stansfield Turner’s term, he also believed individual agencies ignored CI community interests. To remedy this, he wanted a new office to handle counterintelligence issues so that they would not fall into the proverbial black hole. He established such an office, Special Assistant to the DCI for Counterintelligence, in 1978. 87 CI in the Turbulent 1960s and 1970s Administratively Confidential mechanical and electronic equipment and devices used for or capable of intercepting telephone conversations. The WHITE HOUSE In addition, such reports shall contain a list of any June 30, 1965 interceptions currently authorized and the reasons for them. Memorandum for the Heads of Executive Departments and Agencies (S) Lyndon B. Johnson I am strongly opposed to the interception of telephone conversations as a general investigative technique. I recognize that mechanical and electronic devices may US Double Agent Thwarts State sometimes be essential in protecting our national Department Bugging security. Nevertheless, it is clear that indiscriminate use of those investigative devices to overhear telephone An effort by Communist agents to plant an electronic conversations, without the knowledge or consent of any listening device in the State Department building in of the persons involved, could result in serious abuses Washington was overcome by the FBI with the and invasions of privacy. In my view, the invasion of assistance and cooperation of a State Department privacy of communications is a highly offensive practice employee of Czechoslovak heritage, Frank John Mrkva, which should be engaged in only where the national who acted as a double agent for more than four years. security is at stake. To avoid an misunderstanding on The details of the case as released by the State this subject in the Federal Government, I am establishing Department in July 1966, have many of the trappings the following basic guidelines to be followed by all of a James Bond or Le Carre spy novel. government agencies: Two members of the Czechoslovak Embassy in (1) No federal personnel is to intercept telephone Washington were directly implicated in this espionage conversations within the United States by any operation. The first, Zdenek Pisk, served as Third mechanical or electronic device, without the consent of Secretary and later as Second Secretary of the one of the parties involved, (except in connection with Czechoslovak Embassy. Pisk departed the United States investigations related to the national security) on May 8, 1963, but had returned and occupied the post of First Secretary at the Czechoslovak United Nations (2) No interception shall be undertaken or continued Mission in New York City. The second agent, Jiri without first obtaining the approval of the Attorney Opatrny, assigned as an Attaché of the Czechoslovak General. Embassy in Washington, took over the spy operation from Pisk upon his departure from Washington, DC, in (3) All federal agencies shall immediately conform May 1963. their practices and procedures to the provisions of this order. In 1961, Pisk became acquainted with Frank John Mrkva, whose official US State Department duties Utilization of mechanical or electronic devices to included messenger runs to the Czechoslovak Embassy. overhear non-telephone conversations is an even more At Pisk’s invitation, Frank Mrkva attended social difficult problem, which raises substantial and functions at the Czechoslovak Embassy. The first overt unresolved questions of Constitutional interpretation. I act on the part of Pisk to enlist Mrkva into Czechoslovak desire that each agency conducting such investigations espionage activities was on November 30, 1961. Pisk consult with the Attorney