DOMESTIC CIA AND FBI MAIL OPENING PROGRAMS
PART I: SUMMARY AND PRINCIPAL CONCLUSIONS
Between 1940 and 1973, two agencies of the federal government -- the CIA and the FBI -- covertly and illegally opened and photographed first class letter mail within the United States. These agencies conducted a total of twelve mail opening programs for lengths of time varying from three weeks to twenty-six years. In a single program alone, more than 215,000 communications were intercepted, opened, and photographed; the photographic copies of these letters, some dated as early as 1955, were indexed, filed, and are retained even today. Information from this and other mail opening programs -- "sanitized" to disguise its true source -- was disseminated within the federal establishment to other members of the intelligence community, the Attorney General, and to the President of the United States.
The stated objective of the CIA programs was the collection of foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information; that of the FBI programs was the collection of counterespionage information. In terms of their respective purposes, seven of the twelve mail opening programs were considered to have been successful by Agency and Bureau officials. One CIA project and three of the FBI programs concededly failed to obtain any significant relevant information. Another CIA operation -- clearly the most massive of all the programs in terms of numbers of letters opened -- was believed to have been of value to the Agency by some officials, but was criticized by many others as having produced only minimally useful foreign intelligence. Despite two unfavorable internal reviews, this program nonetheless continued unabated for twenty years.
While all of these programs responded to the felt intelligence needs of the CIA and the FBI during the "cold war" of the 1950's and early 1960's, once in place they could be -- and sometimes were -- directed against the citizens of this country for the collection of essentially domestic intelligence. In the 1960's and early 1970's, large numbers of American dissidents, including those who challenged the condition of racial minorities and those who opposed the war in Vietnam, were specifically targeted for mail opening by both agencies. In one program, selection of mail on the basis of "personal taste" by agents untrained in foreign intelligence objectives resulted in the interception and opening of the mail of Senators, Congressmen, journalists, businessmen, and even a Presidential candidate.
The first mail opening program began shortly before the United States entered World War II, when representatives of an allied country's censorship agency taught six FBI agents the techniques of "chamfering" (mail opening) for use against Axis diplomatic establishments in Washington, D.C. The program was suspended after the war but reinstituted during the "cold war" in the early 1950's; the method was similar but the targets new. Shortly after this program was reinstituted, the CIA entered the field with a mail opening project in New York designed to intercept mail to and from the Soviet Union. Between 1954 and 1957, the FBI and the CIA each developed second programs, in response to post-war events in Asia, to monitor mail entering the United States from that continent; and the CIA briefly conducted a third operation in New Orleans to intercept Latin and Central American mail as well. The technique of chamfering was most widely used by the FBI during the period 1959 to 1966: in these years the Bureau operated no fewer than six programs in a total of eight cities in the United States. In July 1966, J. Edgar Hoover ordered an end to all FBI programs, but the Bureau continued to cooperate with the CIA, which acted under no such self-restriction, in connection with the Agency's New York project. In 1969, a fourth CIA program was established in San Francisco and was conducted intermittently until 1971. The era of warrantless mail opening was not ended until 1973, when, in the changed political climate of the times, the political risk -- "flap potential" -- of continuing the CIA's New York project was seen to outweigh its avowed minimal benefit to the Agency.
All of these mail opening programs were initiated by agency officials acting without prior authorization from a President, Attorney General, or Postmaster General; some of them were initiated without prior authorization by the Directors or other senior officials within the agencies themselves. Once initiated, they were carefully guarded and protected from exposure. The record indicates that during the thirty-three years of mail opening, fewer than seven Cabinet level officers were briefed about even one of the projects; only one President may have been informed; and there is no conclusive evidence any Cabinet officer or any President had contemporaneous knowledge that this coverage involved the actual opening -- as opposed to the exterior examination -- of mail. The postal officials whose cooperation was necessary to implement these programs were purposefully not informed of the true nature of the programs; in some cases, it appears that they were deliberately misled. Congressional inquiry was perceived by both CIA and FBI officials as a threat to the security of their programs; during one period of active investigation both agencies contemplated additional security measures to mislead the investigators and protect their programs against disclosure to Congress. Only in rare cases did the CIA and the FBI even inform one another about their programs.
Many of the major participants in these mail opening programs, including senior officials in policy-making positions, believed that their activities were unlawful. Yet the projects were considered to be so sensitive that no definitive legal opinions were ever sought from either the CIA's General Counsel or the Attorney General. The record is clear, in fact, that the perceived illegality of mail opening was a primary reason for closely guarding knowledge of the programs from ranking officials in both the executive and legislative branches of the government.
The legal fears of CIA and FBI officials were firmly based, for sanctity of the mail has been a long-established principle in American jurisprudence. Fourth Amendment restrictions on first class mail opening were recognized as early as 1878, when the Supreme Court wrote in Ex Parte Jackson, 96 U.S. 727,733 (1878):
Letters and sealed packages of this kind in the mail are as fully guarded from examination and inspection, except as to their outward form and weight, as if they were retained by the parties forwarding them in their own domiciles. The constitutional guaranty of the right of the people to be secure in their papers against unreasonable searches and seizures extends to their papers, thus closed against inspection, wherever they may be. Whilst in the mail, they can only be opened and examined under like warrant, issued upon similar oath or affirmation, particularly describing the thing to be seized, as is required when papers are subjected to search in one's own household. No law of Congress can place in the hands of officials connected with the postal service any authority to invade the secrecy of letters and such sealed packages in the mail; and all regulations adopted as to mail matter of this kind must be in subordination to the great principle embodied in the fourth amendment of the Constitution.
This principle was re-affirmed as recently as 1970 in United States v. Van Leeuwen, 397 U.S. 249, 251 (1970) : "It has long been held," the Supreme Court there wrote, "that first-class mail such as letters and sealed packages subject to letter postage -- as distinguished from newspapers, magazines, pamphlets and other printed matter -- is free from inspection by postal authorities, except in the manner provided by the Fourth Amendment."
Not only the Fourth Amendment's prohibition against unreasonable searches and seizures, but First Amendment values of free speech are involved in the opening of first class mail. As Justice Holmes stated in 1921, in a dissent now embraced by prevailing legal opinion: "The use of the mails is almost as much a part of free speech as the right to use our tongues." Milwaukee Pub. Co. v. Burleson, 255 U.S. 407, 437 (1921). Justice William 0. Douglas quoted this passage with approval in a 1965 decision which invalidated a procedure whereby incoming third and fourth class propaganda could be indefinitely detained by Postal and Customs officials -- a procedure, incidentally, which had provided cover for three CIA and FBI mail opening programs. 1 Lamont v. Postmaster General, 381 U.S. 301, 305 (1965). In 1974, in a case involving censorship of prisoner mail, the Supreme Court also noted that "the addressee as well as the sender of direct personal correspondence derives from the First and Fourteenth Amendments a protection against unjustified governmental interference with the intended communication." Procunier v. Martinez, 416 U.S. 396,408-409 (1974).
Statutory as well as constitutional protection has traditionally been accorded first class letter mail. Throughout the entire postwar period in which FBI and CIA mail opening programs were conducted, the statutory framework of legal prohibitions against the unauthorized opening of mail have remained essentially constant. The pertinent statutes, enacted in 1948 and substantially unchanged since then, are set forth below:
1. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1701:
Whoever knowingly and willfully obstructs or retards the passage of the mail, or any carrier or conveyance carrying the mail, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than six months, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 778.)
2. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1702:
Whoever takes any letter, postal card, or package out of any post office or any authorized depository for mail matter, or from any letter or mail carrier, or which has been in any post office or authorized depository, or in the custody of any letter or mail carrier, before it has been delivered to the person to whom it was directed, with design to obstruct the correspondence, or to pry into the business or secrets of another, or opens, secretes, embezzles, or destroys the same, shall be fined not more than $2,000 or imprisoned not more than five years, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 778.)
3. 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1703 (b) :
Whoever, without authority, opens, or destroys any mail or package of newspapers not directed to him, shall be fined not more than $100 or imprisoned not more than one year, or both. (June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 778; May 24, 1949, ch. 139, Sec. 37, 63 Stat. 95; Aug. 12, 1970, Pub. L. 91-375, § 6 (j) (16), 84 Stat. 778.)
The issue of proper authority for the opening of mail, which is raised by 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1703(b) above, was, until 1960, dealt with in 18 U.S.C. Sec. 1717(c) : "No person other than a duly authorized employee of the Dead Letter office, or other person upon a search warrant authorized by law, shall open any letter not addressed to himself." This section was repealed in 1960 and recodified in essentially similar form at 39 U.S.C. 4057. When the Postal Service was reorganized in 1970, Section 4057 was in turn repealed and substantially recodified at 39 U.S.C. 3623 (d), which provides in part:
No letter of such a class [i.e., first class] of domestic origin shall be opened except under authority of a search warrant authorized by law, or by an officer or employee of the Postal Service for the sole purpose of determining an address at which the letter can be delivered, or pursuant to the authorization of the addressee.
The only persons who can lawfully open first class mail without a warrant, in short, are employees of the Postal Service for a very limited purpose -- not agents of the CIA or FBI.
In the face of the Constitution and these statutes, mail was surreptitiously opened for more than three decades without warrant; without Congressional or clear Presidential authority; frequently without approval by senior agency officials; and, in the case of the most massive program, despite critical internal evaluations as well. Seasoned intelligence officers in both agencies genuinely believed that this activity was important to safeguard the country from foreign adversaries. But to defend the national security, they chose to employ a technique that was neither sanctioned by the laws nor authorized by the elected leaders of the country they sought to protect. And since they defined the nature of our enemies, this technique came to be directed against American dissidents as well as foreigners.
PART II: CIA DOMESTIC MAIL OPENING
I. INTRODUCTION AND MAJOR FACTS The CIA conducted four mail opening programs within the United States, the longest of which lasted for twenty years. These programs resulted in the opening and photographing of nearly a quarter of a million items of correspondence, the vast majority of which were to or from American residents. While the programs were ostensibly conducted for foreign intelligence and counterintelligence purposes, one former high-ranking CIA official characterized the Agency's use of this technique as a "shotgun" approach to intelligence collection; 2 neither Congressmen, journalists, nor businessmen were immune from mail interception. With cooperation from the FBI, domestic "dissidents" were directly targeted in one of the programs.
The major facts regarding CIA domestic mail opening may be summarized as follows:
a. The CIA conducted four mail opening programs in four cities within the United States for varying lengths of time between 1953 and 1973: New York (1953-1973) ; San Francisco (four separate occasions, each of one to three weeks duration, between 1969 and 1971) ; New Orleans (three weeks in 1957) ; and Hawaii (late 1954 -- late 1955). The mail of twelve individuals in the United States, some of whom were American citizens unconnected with the Agency, was also opened by the CIA in regard to particular cases.
b. The stated purpose of all of the mail opening programs was to obtain useful foreign intelligence and counterintelligence information. At least one of the programs produced no such information, however, and the continuing value of the major program in New York was discounted by many Agency officials.
c. Despite the stated purpose of the programs, numerous domestic dissidents, including peace and civil rights activists, were specifically targeted for mail opening.
d. The random selection of mail for opening, by CIA employees untrained in foreign intelligence objectives and without substantial guidance from their superiors, also resulted in the interception of communications to or from high-ranking United States government officials, as well as journalists, authors, educators, and businessmen.
e. All of the mail opening programs were initiated without the prior approval of any government official outside of the Agency.
f. Only five Cabinet level officials, and possibly one President, were briefed in varying degrees of detail about the New York program during the twenty years it continued, and there is no conclusive evidence that any of these officials ever authorized -- or knew of -- the mail opening aspect of the project. The evidence suggests that in the cases of some of these officials, their professed lack of knowledge about mail opening was due to a stated desire to remain ignorant of the details of the program.
g. No high-ranking government official was ever briefed about three of the four mail opening programs.
h. Postal officials whose cooperation was necessary to effect the programs were purposefully misled as to the purpose of the projects, the question of custody of the letters, and the fact of mail opening itself.
i. One President of the United States, whether through design or negligence, was given false and misleading information about the existence of CIA mail opening programs. In 1970, the Director of Central Intelligence signed a document for submission to the President which stated that all mail opening programs by federal agencies had been discontinued. This Director knew that at that time the most extensive CIA mail opening program continued to operate in New York.
j. Within the Agency itself, two former Directors of Central Intelligence did not authorize and apparently did not even know about any of the mail opening programs that were conducted during their tenure. Another former Director was unaware of at least one mail opening project during his term.
k. Some senior Agency officials whose approvals were sought in connection to one mail opening program were apparently deceived as to its true nature by middle-level officers. The senior officials were requested to authorize a mail cover operation only, but mail opening was both contemplated at the time of the requests and did in fact occur.
l. None of the programs was ever subjected to formal internal evaluation. Such review as did occur concluded that the largest of the programs were poorly administered and without substantial benefit to the CIA. These conclusions were ignored and the project continued.
m. Because of the extreme sensitivity of the projects and the internal pattern of compartmentation, many of those CIA components which could have derived the greatest foreign intelligence value from the product were not even aware of the mail opening programs.
n. Most of the major participants in the mail opening programs believed that the Agency's activities in this area were unlawful. No definitive legal opinion was ever sought from the CIA's General Counsel, and the evidence suggests that knowledge of the programs was purposefully withheld from him for security reasons.
o. The general reaction among Agency officials to the perceived illegality of mail opening was to fabricate "cover stories'' for public consumption and to agree on a public denial of CIA domestic mail opening activity in the event such activity were exposed.
p. During periods of active Congressional investigation into invasions of privacy by federal agencies, and when persons knowledgeable of CIA mail openings were in a position to be called to testify before Congress, security precautions for mail opening programs were tightened to reduce the risk of exposure.
q. In part because of his "secrecy agreement" with the Agency, a former CIA employee who was in a position at the Postal Service to force the termination of a mail opening program was inhibited from doing so for several years. His loyalty to the CIA, even after he left its service, prevented him from informing the Postmaster General of its existence.
r. The largest of the mail opening projects was not terminated until 1973, when, in the charged political climate of the times, it was considered too great a "political risk" to continue. It was not terminated because it was perceived to be illegal per se.
II. NEW YORK CITY MAIL INTERCEPT PROJECT The CIA's New York mail intercept project, encrypted HTLINGUAL by the Counterintelligence Staff and SRPOINTER by the Office of Security, was the most extensive of all the CIA's mail intercept programs, both in terms of the volume of mail that was opened and in terms of duration. Over the twenty year course of mail openings, more than 215,000 letters to and from the Soviet Union were opened and photographed by CIA agents in New York. Copies of more than 57,000 of these letters were also disseminated to the FBI, which learned of this operation in 1958, levied requirements on it, and received the fruits of the coverage until the project was terminated.
Despite the absence of clear authorization outside the CIA, despite the generally unfavorable internal reviews of the project in 1960 and 1969, and despite the facts that it was generally seen as illegal and that its primary value was believed by many agency officials to accrue to the FBI in the area of domestic intelligence, the momentum generated by this project from its inception in the early 1950's continued unchecked until February of 1973.
A. Operation of the Program
1. The Initial Phase: Mail Covers
The Original Proposal. -- The New York mail project originated in the spring of 1952 with a proposal by the Soviet (SR) Division, supported by the Chief of the Operations Staff (now the Deputy Director for Operations) and the Office of Security, to scan exteriors of all letters to the Soviet Union and to record, by hand, the names and addresses of the correspondents. While the original plan did not contemplate the opening of mail immediately, it was recognized that "[o]nce our unit was in position, its activities and influence could be extended gradually, so as to secure from this source every drop of potential intelligence information available." 3 Specifically, it was believed that such a project could:
-- "furnish much live ammunition for psychological warfare;
-- "produce subjects, who if proven loyal to the United States, might be good agent material because of their contacts within the Soviet Union;
-- "offer documentary material for reproduction and subsequent use by our own agents;
-- "produce intelligence information when read in the light of other known factors and events; and
-- "create a channel for sending communications to American agents inside the Soviet Union." 4
Feasibility Study. -- On July 1, 1952, the Chief of the Special Security Division recommended that "[a]s an initial step . . . we should make contact in the Post Office Department at a very high level, pleading relative ignorance of the situation and asking that we, with their cooperation, make a thorough study of the volume of such mail, the channels through which it passes and particularly, the bottle necks within the United States in which we might place our survey teams." 6 He advised against informing Post Office officials about the ultimate purposes of the project, however, noting that "[a]t the outset . . . as far as the Post Office Department is concerned, our main target could be the securing of names and addresses for investigation and possible future contact." 7
Two CIA officers from the Office of Security and the SR Division met with a representative of the International Division of the Post Office on the very day the Chief of the Special Security Division submitted the above recommendation. At this meeting, the Post Office official agreed to provide the Agency with a complete statement of "U.S.-U.S.S.R. postal accounting." 8
Clifton C. Garner, then Postal Inspector of the Post Office Department, was subsequently contacted by Agency personnel in the Offices of Operations and Security. It had been determined that most mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passed through the Port of New York, and on November 6, 1952, Garner was requested in writing to make arrangements for "one or two designated employees of this organization [i.e., CIA] to work with an inspector of your Department, under conditions determined by you to examine a portion of this mail traffic." 9 While Garner cannot recall receiving this letter," he apparently agreed to make the necessary arrangments: one month later, Henry Montague, then Postal Inspector in Charge of the New York Division, approved the implementation of such an examination. 11
Commencement of the Project. -- The results of the initial survey were felt to be positive, and the project commenced on a full-time basis in February 1953. Henry Montague recalls that shortly prior to the commencement of the project, he had received a telephone call from David Stephens, who replaced Garner as Chief Postal Inspector under President Eisenhower, informing him that CIA agents would come to his office within the next few days to request his cooperation. 12 According to Montague, Stephens instructed him to assist the Agency but warned him that there was to be no tampering with the mail beyond the minimum handling necessary for an exterior examination. When the agents visited Montague shortly thereafter, he specifically told the agents -- and, according to Montague, the agents agreed -- that mail should not be opened. 13 Montague then requested a subordinate in the New York Division to make the necessary arrangements and the CIA representatives were installed in a room in the New York General Post Office.
Briefing the Postmaster General. -- By September 1953, after seven months of operation, the project was considered to be sufficiently productive to merit expansion beyond hand-copying information from the outside of envelopes. A CIA officer of the Soviet Division proposed "the complete photographic coverage of the cover information on all letters posted from the Soviet Union to the U.S. and vice versa." 14 Plans were made within the Agency to effect this type of coverage, but the postal officials who had cooperated thus far balked. It was noted in a January 4, 1954 internal CIA memorandum that "[f]or understandable reasons, postal authorities, at the level of our present dealings, are reluctant to extend that degree of cooperation without orders from above." 15 This memorandum recommended that the Director of Central Intelligence brief both Postmaster General Arthur E. Summerfield and President Eisenhower on the project, and secure the oral approval of the President for photographing the exteriors of letters.
Director Allen Dulles and Richard Helms, then Chief of Operations in the Plans Directorate, met with the Postmaster General and the Chief Postal Inspector, David Stephens, on May 17, 1954. Dulles told Summerfield that the New York project had proven to be very valuable and that the Agency now desired to photograph the exteriors of letter mail from the Soviet Union. No mention was apparently made of mail opening. According to Helms' notes of the meeting, the Postmaster General "did not comment specifically" on the project but seemed receptive. 16 Helms continued: "When the conference broke up, I spoke to David Stevens [sic] privately and asked him if he now had all the authorization he felt he needed. He replied in the affirmative." 17 The second phase of the New York operation -- photographing the exteriors of letters between the United States and the Soviet Union -- began shortly after the Dulles Summerfield meeting. 18
2. Subsequent Evolution of the Project
The CI Staff Take-Over: "More" Mail Opening. -- In November 1955, James Angleton, the Chief of the Counterintelligence (CI) Staff, submitted a proposal to Richard Helms for the further expansion of the New York mail intercept project. Until then, the CIA was only receiving access to a portion of the United States-Soviet Union mail in its New York facility; Angleton recommended that "we gain access to all mail traffic to and from the U.S.S.R. which enters, departs, or transits the United States through the Port of New York." 19 He also suggested that the "raw information acquired be recorded, indexed and analyzed and various components of the Agency furnished items of information which would appear to be helpful to their respective missions." 20 Perhaps most significantly, he recommended a shift in the focus of the project from photographing the mail to opening it. Even prior to the date this proposal was submitted, some mail opening had occurred "without the knowledge of the Post Office Department on a completely surreptitious basis . . . [by] swiping a letter, processing it at night and returning it the next day." 21 This method, however, permitted agents to open a very limited number of items. Angleton proposed that "more [letters] could be opened" 21a if the Agency acquired a separate room which would be off limits to postal employees and which would house special processing equipment. Because he realized that the Office of Security, which had been running the program to date, did not have sufficient manpower for the proposed expansion, Angleton also recommended that primary responsibility for the project be transferred within the Plans Directorate from 0/S to the CI Staff.
This proposal was approved by Helms on December 7, 22 and funds were authorized by the Acting Deputy Director for Plans on March 3, 1956. 23 They were implemented later in 1956 when the intercept location was moved from the General Post Office in Manhattan to a secure room at LaGuardia Airport. While postal officials cooperated to the extent of providing the CIA with the room, their approval was apparently not sought for the opening of mail. 24
FBI "Discovery" of the Project. -- The next significant expansion of the program occurred in January 1958 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation learned of its existence and shortly thereafter began to share in the fruits of the coverage. As early as January 1954 the CIA had contemplated informing the FBI about the project, because it was recognized that "outside of its definite foreign intelligence value . . . there will be produced information affecting Internal Security." 25 Possibly because relations between the CIA and the FBI were strained during the mid-1950's, 26 however, the Bureau was not officially informed about the project until Bureau inquiries relative to a proposed mail intercept program of its own uncovered the existence of the CIA project. Although the FBI never contributed any resources, either human or financial, to the operation of HTLINGUAL, it did levy requirements on the project and received copies of intercepted letters on a regular basis until the project was terminated in 1973. This aspect of the New York mail intercept project is treated in greater detail in Part III below.
The TSD Laboratory. -- The final stage in the evolution of the project occurred in 1960 and 1961. By memorandum of February 25, 1960, James Angleton advised Richard Helms, now Acting Deputy Director for Plans, that the project would benefit from the establishment of a laboratory to examine a selected portion of the opened letters. 27 He noted that at the present time there is no capability for "searching for secret writing and/or microdots; determination as to whether items have been previously opened and technically examined . . . . [or] opening items sealed with the more difficult and sophisticated adhesives." 28 A laboratory, he argued, would make these activities feasible as well as enable the project staff "to increase our production about 20 percent." Helms approved the establishment of the laboratory, 29 and it opened, under the direction of the Technical Services Division (TSD), about one year later in March 1961.
3. Full Operation of the Program
Volume of Mail Intercepted. -- According to CIA records, a total of 28,322,796 letters were made available to CIA agents in New York during the twenty year course of the project. 30 Of these, the exteriors of 2,705,706 letters were photographed, and 215,820 letters were actually opened. 31 Mail opening had begun on a relatively small scale. In 1956, for example, only 832 letters were opened. But momentum developed quickly: two years later more than 8,000 letters were opened and by 1961, when the TSD laboratory was established, in excess of 14,000 letters were being opened annually. The height of the project in terms of volume was 1967, when a total of 23,617 letters were opened and analyzed.
Mechanics. -- Mail was physically intercepted at LaGuardia Airport from 1956 until 1962, when the project moved to Idlewild (Kennedy) Airport. At both locations, the mechanics were essentially the same: mail to and from the Soviet Union was delivered each day by a postal clerk to a secure room in which the agents worked. Five days a week, a team of about four Office of Security personnel screened and photographed this mail. The clerk, who received an annual bonus of $500 from the Agency for his efforts, 32 also helped to sort the mail according to region within the Soviet Union, but he was never informed that selected items would be opened. According to one of the agents who processed the mail, approximately two to six bags, containing a total of 5,000 to 15,000 items of correspondence, would be delivered and sorted each day. 33 The exteriors of as many of these items as possible were photographed with a Diebold machine, and from 35 to 75 letters would be selected for opening daily. 33a Prior to 1969, the agents "swiped" 34 the letters that had been selected for opening from the room by placing them in their pockets or an attache case, and hand carried them to the Office of Security's Manhattan Field Office for opening and photographing. From 1969 to 1973, opening and photographing were conducted at the intercept location itself.
The agents who opened the mail all attended a one-week course called "flaps and seals" (mail opening techniques), which was run by TSD at CIA Headquarters. The basic method of opening the mail was extremely simple, however: the glue on the envelopes was softened by steam from a kettle, and with the aid of a narrow stick the flap was pried open and the letter removed. One of the agents who opened the mail testified that "[y]ou could do it with your own teapot at home." 35 It took approximately five to fifteen seconds to open a single letter. At one point in the 1960's, the CIA developed a type of steam "oven" that was capable of handling about one hundred letters simultaneously, but its performance was judged inadequate and the agents soon returned to the kettle and stick method.
The TSD laboratory, which became operative in 1961, was originally located in the Office of Security's Manhattan Field Office and subsequently transferred to Kennedy Airport. The Office of Security personnel who opened the mail brought it to this laboratory where it was subjected to further chemical and other technical examination for secret writing and censorship techniques by the two or three TSD agents permanently assigned to the project. Because examination was time consuming, it was only possible to test a small portion of those letters which had been opened and photographed.
The original letters, which had been opened, photographed, and possibly subjected to the TSD examination, were re-sealed and returned the next morning to the airport, at which point they would be re-inserted into the mail stream. Total delay time, therefore, averaged one day. The photographic copies were then bundled and sent by registered mail or courier on a near daily basis from the Manhattan Field Office to the Office of Security at CIA Headquarters, which would forward them to CT Staff analysts. These analysts, whose number varied from a minimum of two to a maximum of six, reviewed the contents of the letters and, on the basis of their knowledge of the requirements levied by various CIA components and the FBI, either fully translated or summarized each item of correspondence. The copies of the letters were indexed and retained in the CI Staff project room at Headquarters (where they are still on file), and appropriate translations and summaries were disseminated within the Agency to the SR Division, the Office of Security, and the CI Staff itself, as well as to the FBI.
B. Nature and Value of the Product
1. Selection Criteria
Letters were selected for opening by two basic methods: (1) on the basis of a list of names known as the "Watch List," and (2) randomly. By one CIA estimate, the "Watch List" accounted for approximately 25% of the total volume of mail that was opened; random selection for 75%. 36
The Watch List. -- The Watch List originated in the mid-1950's, at which time it consisted of only ten to twenty names. With the SR Division, the CI Staff, the Office of Security, and the FBI all contributing names to the list it grew rapidly, however: by the end of the project the Watch List totaled about 600 names. One reason for the growth of the Watch List is that the categories into which these individuals or organizations fell were progressively broadened over the years. In April 1957, for example, a CIA memorandum suggested five narrow categories of names:
(1) former agents or covert contract personnel who originally came from "the Denied Area" in Europe, were utilized by the Agency, and have now been resettled in the United States or Canada;
(2) defectors from "the Denied Area" in Europe who were under the control or auspices of the Agency and who have now been resettled in the United States or Canada;
(3) repatriates from the United States or Canada who were originally brought to the United States or Canada under the auspices of the Agency and who have now returned or will return to the USSR;
(4) suspected Soviet agents or other individuals either temporarily or permanently residing in the United States, who are known or suspected of being engaged in counterespionage or counterintelligence activities on behalf of the USSR; and
(5) foreign nationals, originally from the USSR and satellite countries, now residing in the United States and presently being utilized by the Agency in any capacity. 37
Within a short time, the Watch List had expanded far beyond these relatively narrow and well-defined categories. The names of individuals who were in contact with Watch Listed persons and organizations were frequently added to the list themselves, 38 and, as an August 1961 memorandum points out, a very large percentage of the names on the list were placed there because of "leads which came about through the random selection." 39
The focus of the Watch List also changed as it grew. In the early years of the project the names on the list might reasonably have been expected to lead to genuine foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information, but as the project evolved many of the names that were added to the list were far more likely to generate essentially domestic, rather than foreign, intelligence information. In 1969, for example, Richard Ober of the CIA solicited the FBI for names of domestic political radicals and black militants to include on the list. An FBI memorandum states that he "suggested to the Liaison Agent that the Bureau should not overlook the utilization of the agency's Hunter [New York mail opening] project for the development of leads in the New Left and Black Nationalist fields. Ober admitted that traffic involving individuals in these areas might be light but that the Bureau might wish to give consideration to placing stops on certain key personalities." 40 A handwritten notation at the bottom of this memorandum indicated that "stops . . . on black extremists" were not felt to be "Warranted ... at this time" by the Bureau, but the names of a significant number of anti-war activists and groups were submitted to the CIA, as were the names of several "black extremists" at a later date. 41 From 1958 to 1973, in fact, the FBI alone contributed a total of 286 names to the Watch List. 42
While Bureau requirements clearly augmented the emerging "domestic intelligence" nature of the Watch List, CIA components also contributed generously to this trend. Among the individuals and organizations who came to be placed on the Watch List by the CIA were numerous domestic peace organizations, such as the American Friends Service Committee; political activists, scientists and scientific organizations, such as the Federation of American Scientists; academics with a special interest in the Soviet Union; authors, such as Edward Albee and John Steinbeck; businesses, such as Fred A. Praeger Publishers; and Americans who frequently travelled to or corresponded with the Soviet Union, including one member of the Rockefeller family. 43
The Watch List, in short, originated with a relatively few names which might reasonably be expected to lead to genuine foreign intelligence or counterintelligence information, but expanded well beyond the initial guidelines into the area of essentially domestic intelligence.
Random Selection. -- The documentary record of the CIA suggests that a very large percentage of the letters that were opened in the course of the New York project were to or from individuals who were not on the Watch List at all. One CIA memorandum points out that the "New York Security officers who opened the mail selected about 75 percent at random, and the remaining 25 percent was on the basis of a watchlist compiled by the CI Staff." 44 While there is some evidence that the percentage of random openings may have decreased in the later years of the project, it always represented a significant proportion of the mail that was opened.
The CIA mail "interceptors" were not foreign intelligence or counterintelligence experts. One of the CIA agents who opened the mail in this project testified that other than memorizing the Watch List, he received no instruction at all as to what categories of mail to select. 45 When asked the basis for opening mail to or from people who were not on the Watch List. this agent replied: "It might be according to individual taste, if you will, your own reading about current events. ... I personally used to like to do Central and South America items [that were missent by the Post Office]. ... [Y]ou never knew what you would hit." 46 He added: "We would try to get a smattering of everything, maybe the academic field or travel agencies or something. I don't recall a specific instruction. I kind of place that under our individual tastes." 47
Indeed, this lack of instruction appears to have been a conscious policy of the Office of Security. A CIA memorandum states that the Inspector General's Office, in its review of the New York project in the early 1960's, 47a "took the position that the security officers who were selecting the mail to be opened should have some understanding of headquarters requirements so that their selection could be halfway informed on the basis of areas of interest.... [But the Office of Security] had a paper by [a CIA officer] which said, in effect, that the present system of purely random selection was best and that it wasn't necessary to develop any sort of coordinated approach.... The Office of Security apparently sees no reason why they should have their personnel trained in intelligence objectives." 48
The large random element in the selection process and the lack of formal intelligence training on the part of the agents who opened the mail combined with the "domestic" evolution of the Watch List to push the project even further from the original foreign intelligence and counterintelligence goals articulated in 1952. Over the twenty-year course of mail opening, the mail that was intercepted included that of many prominent Americans, including at least three United States Senators and a Congressman, one Presidential candidate and numerous educational, business, and civil rights leaders. 49
The "Special Category Items" File. -- The occasional random interception of politicians' mail created a situation for the CIA which was potentially very embarrassing. In August 1971, the selection and opening of a letter from United States Senator Frank Church so concerned a new chief of the CI Staff "Project" that he wrote the Deputy Chief of Counterintelligence, Raymond Rocca: "In order to avoid possible accusations that the CIA engages in the monitoring of the mail of members of the U.S. government, the C/CI may wish to consider the advisability of (a) purging such mail from the files and machine records of the Project and (b) authorizing the issuance of instructions to the 'collectors' to cease the acquisition of such materials." 50 He added: "Instructions would have to define in specific terms what categories of elected or appointed personnel were to be encompassed, and whether they extended to private mail communications." 51 Several months later, in December 1971, a new policy for the handling of such mail was confirmed. An internal CIA memorandum dated December 22, 1971, reads in part:
In accordance with a new policy confirmed yesterday .... Project HTLINGUAL will handle henceforth as follows items originated by or addressed to Elected or Appointed Federal and Senior State Officials (e.g. Governor, Lt. Governor, etc) :
a. No officials in above categories are to be watchlisted;
b. No instructions to be issued to interceptors specifically requesting or forbidding the acquisition of items in cited categories; thus acquisition will be left entirely to chance;
. . . . . .
d. No special-category items shall be carded for inclusion in the HTLINGUAL Machine Records System;
e. Dissemination of special-category items will be at the discretion of DC/CI (and/or C/CI) only,
f. All special-category items will be filed in a separate file titled "SPECIAL-CATEGORY ITEMS", which will be kept in C/CI/Project's safe ... 52 (emphasis in original)
The new policy, therefore, did not prohibit the opening of letters to or from political figures; it simply created a special filing system for their mail. By the end of the project in 1973, the "Special-Category Items" file contained approximately ten photographs or summaries of correspondence to or from Senators Church and Edward M. Kennedy, one Congressman, and one Governor of an American territory. 53 Because the master index was on microfilm, the analysts were unable to purge all references to those politicians whose correspondence had been opened prior to December 1971.
2. Value of the Product
Foreign Intelligence and Counterintelligence. -- There has been considerable debate among CIA officials over the value of the product from the New York operation to the Agency's foreign intelligence and counterintelligence mission. 53a James Angleton, who as Chief of the CI Staff was in charge of the project, was one of its most vocal supporters. He has testified that the New York project "was probably the most important overview [of Soviet intelligence activities] that counterintelligence had." 54 In a February 1973 memorandum for Director Schlesinger, Angleton, contending against termination, summarized some of the benefits to the CIA which resulted from the New York project as follows:
A. The mail intercept Project ... provides information about Soviet-American contacts and insight into Soviet realities and the scope of Soviet interests in the academic, economic, scientific and governmental fields unavailable from any other source. The Project adds a dimension and a perspective to Soviet interests and activities which cannot be obtained from the limited resources available to this Agency and the FBI.
B. The Project is particularly productive in supporting both the Agency and the FBI in pursuing investigative and operational leads to visiting Soviet students, exchange scientists, academicians and intellectuals, trade specialists and experts from organizations such as . . .
C. In many instances the Project provides the only means of detecting continuing contact between [Soviet] controlled exchange students and Americans.
D. The Project provides information otherwise unavailable about the Soviet contacts and travel of Americans to the Soviet Union. . . .
E. Project material recorded for 18 years gives basic information about Soviet individuals and institutions useful to the analyst looking for specific leads and in gauging trends in Soviet interests and policies. 55
This highly favorable assessment of the value of the product from HTLINGUAL contrasts sharply with the views of many other CIA officers. In a 1961 review of the project by the Inspector General's Office, for example it was written:
The SR (Soviet Union) Division is the project's largest customer in the Agency. Information from the CI Staff flows to the SR Support Branch and from there to the operational branches. It may include operational leads, such as the identities of individuals planning to work or reside in the USSR, or items of interest on conditions inside the country. In our interviews we received the impression that few of the operational leads have ever been converted into operations, and that no tangible operational benefits had accrued to SR Division as a result of this project. We have noted elsewhere that the project should be carefully evaluated, and the value of the product to SR Division should be one of the primary considerations. 56
A second internal review eight years later, in 1969, was no more enthusiastic. John Glennon, a former member of the Inspector General's staff which conducted this review, wrote:
. . . Although at one time this material was useful in Soviet legal travel operations and as positive information on Soviet internal economic and political matters, we find that the Clandestine Service has little interest in it now. Most of the officers we spoke to find it occasionally helpful, but there is no recent evidence of it having provided significant leads or information which have had positive operational results. The Office of Security has found the material to be of very little value. The positive intelligence from this source is meager. 57
In general, he noted that "the take from this program . . . is of little value to this Agency . . ." 57a When Mr. Glennon was asked in recent public hearings whether he still agreed with this basic conclusion, he responded that, if anything, the product was probably even less valuable than he indicated in 1969. 58 Howard Osborn, who was Director of Security from 1964 to 1974, and therefore responsible for the role played by the Office of Security during those years, agreed that his office received no value from the product. He publicly testified that "[w]e got no benefit from it at all.... The product was worthless." 59
Even Richard Helms, who was personally involved with the New York mail project on a decisional level from mid-1954 through the days immediately prior to the 1973 termination, was tepid in his evaluation of the project's value to the Agency. Of the product from 215,820 opened letters and nearly three million photographed envelopes, he said: I thought from time to time that the Agency got useful information out of it." 60
Domestic Intelligence. -- Given the nature of the selection criteria, it is not surprising that a significant -- perhaps the primary -- portion of the product related to domestic, rather than foreign, intelligence concerns. The 1961 review of the project, for example, characterized the product as "largely domestic CI/CE [counterintelligence and counterespionage]." 61 This representation was repeated in the 1969 Inspector General's report 62 and, as developed more fully below, by numerous senior Agency officials in the early 1970's. 63
Only to the extent that the CIA's mission was perceived as encompassing "domestic CI/CE" matters could the Agency itself benefit from this type of information. Thus, Gordon Stewart, the Inspector General whose staff reviewed the New York project and found its positive intelligence value "meager," conceded that the project in 1969 may logically have been valuable in terms of the domestic surveillance activities the Agency was then conducting. He testified that in the late 1960's and early 1970's:
... we were involved in compiling files on subversives in this country, the youth, and so on. And there was an enormous amount of pressure being placed on the Agency by the White House to develop, if possible, a connection between subversive organizations in this country and some external groups, say the Communists or Moscow or something of that sort. It would seem to me to be logical that if that is what you were doing, maybe at one phase this project had been regarded as useful to the Agency. 64
But it is questionable whether analysis of foreign influence on domestic political activity is within the CIA's mandate at all. Such domestic counterintelligence concerns are an aspect of internal security, which is the responsibility of the FBI, not the CIA. 64a
Value to the FBI. -- The Bureau did in fact receive a great deal of product from the New York operation: for all but three years between 1958 and 1973 the FBI actually received more copies or summaries of opened letters than did any single component of the CIA. 65 In view of the large quantity of disseminations to the Bureau and the largely domestic nature of the product generally, it is understandable that CIA officials assumed that the Bureau benefited significantly from the Agency's coverage. Angleton stressed the importance of this project to the Bureau's operations when he summarized its value for Director Schlesinger in 1973; 66 this point was noted in both of the Inspector General staff's reviews 67 and in the testimony of Howard Osborn 68 and Richard Helms. 69 Several CIA officials, convinced that the project was more valuable to the FBI than to the Agency itself, even recommended that the Bureau should assume operational responsibility for it. 70
Ironically, however, the testimony of Bureau officials suggests that the CIA may have mistaken quantity of product for quality. It is undeniable that the FBI received some benefit from HTLINGUAL. 70a But one senior Bureau official declared that any benefit received by the FBI had to be evaluated in light of the fact that the product was received gratuitously, with the expenditure of neither money nor manpower. 71 He stated that the project did not provide leads to the identification of a single foreign illegal agent and that much of the product received by the FBI was worthless. 72
In short, it is not clear that HTLINGUAL made any substantial contribution to the CIA's legitimate foreign intelligence and counterintelligence mission or even to its questionable domestic intelligence activities; and while Agency officials assumed that the FBI benefitted greatly from their coverage, this assumption probably overestimated the actual value to the Bureau.
C. Internal Authorization and Controls
Unlike the FBI mail opening programs, the CIA's New York project was extremely de-centralized. It germinated and evolved without the prior approval of the Director of Central Intelligence at critical stages. 72a It continued through the tenure of at least two Directors who were apparently not even informed of its existence. Because it had been exempted from the usual approval system, many of the division heads who would normally have to approve any proposed project of this scope were also never briefed and consequently had no opportunity to challenge the necessity or wisdom of the project. It was reviewed by disinterested agency components only twice during its twenty year history, in neither case extensively, and although both these reviews concluded that the operation was seriously flawed it continued until 1973, when largely external events forced its continuance.
1. Authorizations by Directors of Central Intelligence
Allen Dulles. -- The New York mail project was initiated, and the first contact with the Post Office made, without the apparent authorization -- or even the knowledge -- of Director Allen Dulles. As noted above, two CIA officers of the Office of Security and the SR Division met with a representative of the International Division of the Post Office in July 1952 to secure statistics on the mail flow between the United States and the Soviet Union. It was largely on the basis of this overview that the Office of Security and the SR Division determined that further contact with Postal officials were desirable. CIA documents relating to the early stages of the project, however, make no reference to informing Director Dulles until September 30 of that year. In a memorandum on that date, the Chief of the SR Division wrote the Deputy Director for Plans that "[i]t is requested . . . that DCI be informed of I&S and SR Division intention to initiate action looking toward the most expeditious accumulation of information on all letter envelopes or covers passing through the New York City Post Office originating in the Soviet Union or destined for the Soviet Union." 73
While subsequent documents reflect no explicit authorization from the DCI -- nor even whether or not the DCI was informed of the mail cover operation as per the September 30 request of the Chief of the SR Division -- further contacts were made with the Post Office and the first phase of the project became operational in February 1953.
The first unambiguous documentary indication that the DCI was advised of what was then referred to as SRPOINTER is not found until January 4, 1954. On that date Sheffield Edwards, the Director of Security, wrote to Director Dulles to summarize the anticipated value of the project, to explain the problem regarding the reluctance of postal officials to cooperate with the planned expansion of the project, and to request the Director to meet with the Postmaster General and the President to secure their approval for photographing the exteriors of the envelopes. 74 At this stage, the project was essentially a mail cover operation. No reference was made in that or a subsequent January 1954 memorandum 75 to Director Dulles to the possibility of actually opening the mail.
The only written approvals for the project as it subsequently developed during Dulles' tenure appear to be those of Richard Helms and the Acting Deputy Director for Plans. In December 1955, Helms approved the concept as outlined by James Angleton; 76 in February 1960, he approved establishment of the TSD laboratory. 77 The approval of the Acting Deputy Director for Plans was obtained for funding in March 1956. 78
While it is unclear whether Dulles was ever informed about the laboratory, he was apparently at least made aware of the fact that mail was being opened. In May 1956, he received a memorandum from James Angleton in which Angleton noted that "for some time selected openings have been conducted and the contents examined." 79
John McCone. -- CIA documents do not show that Director John McCone was ever informed about the project. McCone himself testified that he was unaware of it, 80 and his testimony is consistent with that of James Angleton 81 and Howard Osborn. 82
Admiral Raborn. -- There is no evidence that indicates Director Admiral Raborn was ever made aware of the New York project.
Richard Helms. -- The next Director who clearly knew about the New York mail opening project was Richard Helms, who became Acting Director in 1965 and Director in 1966. Helms had been involved with the project since 1954, and, as noted above, had personally approved the expansion of the project to include larger scale mail openings in December 1955 and a Iaboratory in February 1960. Numerous CIA documents reflect his continuing knowledge of and concern about the project during his tenure as Director.
James Schlesinger. -- James Schlesinger, who succeeded Helms as Director in 1973, also was aware of the project. It was his order in February 1973 that led to its termination after two decades of operation. 82a
2. Exemption from Normal Approval System
The New York mail opening project was initially approved by Helms and the ADD/P outside and it remained outside the normal channels for approval and review of CIA projects. As stated in the 1961 Inspector General's report:
The activity cannot be called a "project" in the usual sense, because it was never processed through the approval system and has no separate funds. The various components involved have been carrying out their responsibilities as part of their normal staff functions. Specific DD/P approval was obtained for certain budgetary practices in 1956 and for the establishment of a TSD lab in 1960, but the normal programming procedures have not been followed for the project as a whole . . . . 83
When the first request for formal approval had been submitted to Helms in November 1955, a branch chief of the CI staff suggested to ,James Angleton that "in view of the sensitivity of this project, steps should be taken to have this proposed project approved by the Director without recourse to the normal channels for presentation of projects." 84 The Director himself apparently never formally authorized the project, 84a but the thrust of the branch chief's recommendation was followed. As Angleton later explained, when a typical project "is conceived, it might cut across many jurisdictions to begin with, . . . different geographic divisions and so on, so there would have to be a signoff by the various components, and then it would go before a project review board [whose] members would be drawn from many parts of the clandestine services, and . . . you would have this tremendous opening up of the activity to a great number of people. . . . That is the reason why I think it was excepted from [the usual approval system], and that way it short-circuited the normal project approval process." 85
Because of the perceived sensitivity of the project, in short, the CI Staff did not want those Agency components with no "need to know" to become aware of it. The security of the operation was enhanced by this exemption but the opportunity for critical evaluation by disinterested division heads was lost.
3. Administrative Controls
Internal Review and Evaluation. -- In part because of its exemption from the normal approval system, administrative control over the New York project was lax. It was not a project at all in the formal sense, so there was no mechanism for periodic internal review to determine whether or not its goals were being achieved. During its twenty-year history, the project was reviewed by disinterested Agency components only twice -- in 1961, and again in 1969. Both of these reviews were limited: the first review was part of an evaluation of Office of Security Operations, and so did not encompass the roles played by the CI Staff and TSD; the second review encompassed only the role of the CI Staff.
The Inspector General's staff, which conducted both reviews, concluded that if the project was to continue at all, a more complete evaluation or a mechanism for periodic evaluation of the project was crucial. Specifically, the 1961 study recommended that: "The DD/P and the DD/S direct a coordinated evaluation of this project, with particular emphasis on costs, potential and substantive contributions to the Agency's Mission." 86 And in 1969 the Inspector General's staff wrote that "[f]inally -- and most important -- a schedule for regular re-examination and re-evaluation of the product of the project and of its management, especially with respect to its security, should be established and adhered to." 87
Neither of these recommendations was implemented. The only response to the 1961 recommendation was a five-page summary of the project's mechanics and results by the Director of Security. 88 This summary was apparently felt to constitute a sufficient evaluation, although there is no evidence that the Soviet Division or the FBI -- the entities that were the primary recipients of the project's product -- were ever asked to contribute their respective evaluations. In the case of the 1969 review, the Inspector General did discuss the study's major findings with then-Director Richard Helms, who, according to the Inspector General, "listened intently, as I recall, and that was it." 89 The system of regular re-evaluation which had been recommended was not adopted.
Administrative Problems. -- The primary reason that these two studies concluded that an improved system for evaluation of the project was so essential was their common finding that, in the words of the Inspector General's staff member who conducted the 1969 review, the project "was poorly handled ... administratively and operationally." 90 The 1961 study determined, for example, that it was impossible to analyze the project in terms of costs versus benefits to the Agency because costs were unknown: "The annual cost of this activity cannot be estimated accurately because both administration and operations have always been decentralized. The costs are budgeted by the contributing components as a part of their regular operating programs." 91 It therefore recommended "that exact cost figures be developed to permit the Agency management to evaluate the activity."
In addition, these studies found that the decentralization and limited knowledge of the project within the Agency inhibited maximum exploitation of the product that was generated. The 1961 study noted that "[t]here is no coordinated procedure for processing information received through the program; each component has its own system. ... The same material could thus be recorded in several different indices, but there is no assurance that specific items would be caught in ordinary name traces." 92 In the 1969 review, it was suggested that the product might be useful to some Agency components that did not even know about the project.
Even among those components that did receive product from the New York project, there was no procedure for regular feedback to the CI Staff analysts as to what types of product were considered to be valuable. 92a The CI Staff project chief has testified that he may have received a "chance comment" from people in consumer components, but he was not regularly informed about which kinds of material were or were not useful. 93
One of the most serious administrative problems was that no single person with a knowledge of the CIA's intelligence and counterintelligence requirements was in direct control of the project. As the Inspector General's staff wrote in 1961:
Probably the most obvious characteristic of the project is the diffusion of authority. Each unit is responsible for its own interests and in some areas there is little coordination.
... There is no single point in the Agency to which one might look for policy and operational guidance on the project as a whole. Contributing to this situation is the fact that all of the units involved are basically staff rather than command units, and they are accustomed to working in environments somewhat detached from the operational front lines.
... The greatest disadvantages are (a) there can be no effective evaluation of the project if no officer is concerned with all its aspects, and (b) there is no central source of policy guidance in a potentially embarrassing situation. 94
This theme was reiterated in the 1969 report:
If it is decided that CIA should continue to operate the mail intercept project, we believe that several steps should be taken to improve the management of the program and its effectiveness. Among these is the eventual assignment of a chief to the project who has some depth of experience in operations, especially counterintelligence operations, in order to bring to bear on the analysis of the material more seasoned judgment of its intelligence and counterintelligence value. 95
Despite these recommendations for more centralized control over the project by more experienced personnel, the project remained diffuse and informed guidance was almost non-existent.
Mail was opened and the contents analyzed and disseminated, five days a week for nearly twenty years, without a structure for the systematic evaluation of the project, without its true cost being known, without the effective exploitation of potential intelligence and counterintelligence benefits, and without any centralized coordination or guidance by a single officer trained in intelligence and counterintelligence operations. It is at least reasonable to suggest that if prior approval -- and periodic reapproval -- at the highest level of the Agency had been required, its defects would have been recognized and its momentum checked before 1973.
D. External Authorizations
The New York project lacked a formal structure for authorization by government officials outside as well as inside the CIA: it was never authorized in writing by any such official and the pattern of oral approval is both capricious and obscure. Placed in the light most favorable to the Agency, the CIA obtained the prior oral approval of a Postmaster General for the photographing of envelope exteriors in 1954, and the implied, post facto permission of two Postmasters Genera], one Attorney General, and one President for both the mail opening and the mail cover aspects of the operation. 95a But the Cabinet officers who were allegedly informed of the mail openings deny such knowledge -- in one case because the official acknowledged that he did not want to know and did not believe that he could or should control Agency projects that affected his own Department. In the case of the President, no documentary record of the briefing exists and the CIA official who allegedly informed him concedes that there is only a "possibility" that he "mentioned" it.
Even by its own accounting, the CIA supplied no information about this project to four Postmasters General, seven Attorneys General, and three Presidents under whom it continued. In at least one instance, knowledge of the project was consciously withheld from a Postmaster General; in another instance, a President, whether knowingly or negligently, was misled about the Agency's mail opening activities, and his apparent refusal to authorize use of this technique went unheeded.
1. Postmasters General
Arthur E. Summerfield. -- Arthur Summerfield, Postmaster General during the Eisenhower Administration, was informed of the New York mail project in 1954, and, according to CIA memoranda, assented to the photographing of mail by CIA agents in connection with this project. There is no indication, however, that he approved, or was even advised of, the actual opening of mail by the Agency after that became the primary objective of the project in 1955.
As discussed in the project summary above, the first phase of the mail opening program -- hand-copying information from envelope exteriors -- had begun in February 1953 with cooperation from two Chief Postal Inspectors, Clifton Garner and David Stephens. But when Agency officials recommended in late 1953 that the use of photography rather than hand-copying would enable a greater volume of mail to be covered, postal authorities refused to cooperate without the express approval of the Postmaster General. A January 1954 memorandum, from Director of Security Sheffield Edwards to DCI Dulles, suggested that a meeting between Director Dulles and Summerfield was necessary to resolve the problem. 96
The meeting between Dulles and Postmaster General Summerfield finally occurred about five months later, on May 17, 1954. Richard Helms, then Chief of Operations in the Plans Directorate, as well as Chief Postal Inspector Stephens and two other postal officials, were also in attendance. The only record of this meeting, a contemporaneous memorandum to Sheffield Edwards from Helms, reads in part:
... As regards SRPOINTER, the Director told the group how valuable we had found efforts in this field. He then went on to say that we would like to photograph the backs and fronts of first-class mail from the Soviet and satellite areas.
... (When he had finished his exposition, the Postmaster General did not comment specifically but it was clear that he was in favor of giving us any assistance which he could) . . . 97
The Postmaster General's implied approval was apparently for photographing mail only. Richard Helms, moreover, has recently testified that: "It is my opinion today from reading the records that [Summerfield] was not told the mail was being opened or would be opened." 99 Nor is there any documentary or testimonial evidence that suggests that Summerfield was ever advised of mail openings at any time after that became the primary objective of the project in late 1955.
J. Edward Day. -- J. Edward Day, who was Postmaster General under President Kennedy, from January 1961 to August 1963, also met with Director Dulles and others in regard to the New York mail intercept project. The evidence as to whether or not he was informed that mail was actually opened, however, tends to be contradictory.
In January 1961 a new administration was installed in Washington. As Mr. Helms explained:
President Kennedy had just been sworn in. It was also a new party. The Republicans had had the White House and the executive branch before, and now the Democratic Party had it, and I think Mr. Dulles felt under the circumstances that it was desirable to speak to the Postmaster General because if [the New York project] was to go forward, we needed some support for it. 99
On January 27, 1961, less than one week after Day assumed the position of Postmaster General, the Deputy Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff wrote to Richard Helms to give him general background information for a proposed briefing of the Postmaster General and to advise him that:
There is no record in any conversation with any official of the Post Office Department that we have admitted opening mail. All conversations have involved examination of exteriors. It seems to us quite apparent that they must feel sure that we are opening mail. . . .
It is suggested that if the new Postmaster General asks if we open any mail, we confirm that some mail is opened. He should be informed, however, that no other person in the Post Office Department has been so informed. The reasons for this suggestion are (a) Despite all of our care in the selection and clearance of personnel for a knowledge of this project, at some point, someone is likely to blow it. (b) The Postmaster General will have a better understanding of the importance of the project in the event we desire to expand it .... 100
On February 15, 1961, Director Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Cornelius Roosevelt, then Chief of TSD, met with the new Postmaster General in his office. What transpired at that meeting is a subject of controversy. The only contemporaneous written record is a memorandum dated February 16, one day after the meeting, from Richard Helms back to the Deputy Chief of the Counterintelligence Staff. Helms wrote:
We gave him [Day] the background, development, and current status, withholding no relevant details.
After we had made our presentation, the Postmaster General requested that we be joined by the Chief Postal Inspector, Mr. Henry Montague. This gentleman confirmed what we had had to say about the project and assured the Postmaster General that the matter had been handled securely, quietly, and that there had been no "reverberations." The meeting ended with the Postmaster General expressing the opinion that the project should be allowed to continue and that he did not want to be informed in any greater detail on its handling. He agreed that the fewer people who knew about it, the better. 101
While Helms cannot specifically recall now whether Day was informed of the fact of mail openings, he strongly suggests that Day must have been so informed. Helms recently testified as follows:
As I say, "withholding no relevant details." I assume when I wrote that I meant what I wrote. . . . I cannot imagine what the point of holding it back from him would have been. We were going down to get his permission to continue the operation, and after all, it was his Post Office, if we had lied to him, and then he had discovered through his Chief Postal Inspector that something else was going on, that would not have been a very wise way to behave, it seems to me. 102
Day's version of these events differs from Helms. Apparently Day did not believe that it was entirely "his Post Office," for in regard to sensitive CIA operations, even those that touched on postal matters, be testified: "It wasn't my responsibility. The CIA had an entirely different kind of responsibility than I did. And what they had to do, they had to do. And I had no control over them." 103 Because of this perception of the role of the Postmaster General vis-a-vis the Agency, he did not wish to know the details of the New York project. According to his account of the meeting, he interrupted Mr. Dulles before being informed that the project involved the opening of mail. Day stated:
. . . Mr. Dulles, after some preliminary visiting and so on, said that he wanted to tell me something very secret, and I said, "do I have to know about it?" And he said, "No."
I said, "My experience is that where there is something that is very secret, it is likely to leak out, and anybody that knew about it is likely to be suspected of having been part of leaking it out, so I would rather not know anything about it."
What additional things were said in connection with him building up to that, I don't know. But I am sure ... that I was not told anything about opening mail. 104
Day's general recollection is given some support by an internal CIA memorandum written more than a decade later by the Chief of the CI Staff Project (HTLINGUAL). This memorandum, written in August 1971 and attached to Helms' February 16,1961 summary, reads:
The wording of this memo leaves some doubt as to the degree to which Day was made witting. I tend to feel that he was briefed on the "mail surveillance" aspect and NOT the clandestine opening. I find some confirmation in the sentence in para. 2 "This gentleman (i.e. the Inspector Montague) confirmed what we had to say about the Project ..." Montague was NOTWITTING [sic] OF THE clandestine opening and therefore the subject of the briefing of Day must have been mail surveillance only. 105 [Emphasis in original.]
Thus, it cannot be definitely said that Day knew -- or did not know -- of the mail openings. All that is clear is that an Agency memorandum suggests that the CIA was prepared to inform the Postmaster General of this activity, that Helms at the time believed Day had been provided with enough of the "relevant details" to interpret his reaction as generally approving the continuance of the project; and that Day's general belief was that the Postmaster General had no control over and should defer to the Agency's covert operations, even those which might involve the United States mails -- he "would rather not know anything about it." 105a
John A. Gronouski. -- There is no claim by the CIA that Mr. Gronouski, who was Postmaster General from August 1963 until November 1965, was ever informed of the CIA's New York mail intercept project. According to one internal CIA document, consideration was given to the idea of informing him in 1965 at the time of the hearings of the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure. This subcommittee, chaired by Senator Edward V. Long of Missouri, was investigating the use of mail covers and various other techniques by federal agencies, and CIA officials were seriously concerned about "the dangers inherent in Long's subcommittee activities to the security of the Project's operations . . ." 106 The idea of informing Gronouski was quickly rejected, however, "in view of various statements by Gronouski before the Long subcommittee." 107 Since Gronouski had agreed with the Subcommittee that tighter administrative controls on mail covers were necessary and generally supported the principle of the sanctity of the mail, it is reasonable to infer that CIA officials assumed he would not be sympathetic to the technique of mail opening. Such an inference is supported by the next sentence in the memorandum which reflects this conversation: "[Thomas] Karamessines agreed with this thought and suggested that, in his opinion, the President would be more inclined to go along with the idea of the operation."
Lawrence F. O'Brien. -- There is no claim by the CIA that Mr. O'Brien, who was Postmaster General from 1965 to 1968, was ever informed of the project.
W. Marvin Watson. -- Similarly, there is no suggestion that Mr. Watson, who held the office of Postmaster General in 1968 and 1969, was ever told of the project. Richard Helms has testified that he "never felt any need or compulsion to talk to Gronouski or O'Brien or Watson." 108
Winton M. Blount. -- The next Postmaster General briefed about the New York mail intercept project was Winton Blount, who served in that office from the first days of the Nixon Administration in 1969 until October 1971. As with the CIA's briefing of Edward Day, however, it is not clear whether Blount was specifically informed about the mail opening aspect of the operation.
At least two reasons appear to have motivated Richard Helms, now Director of Central Intelligence, to seek a meeting with Postmaster General Blount about the New York project. First, he was strongly urged to do so by William Cotter, a former CIA employee who had been appointed Chief Postal Inspector in April 1969. In Cotter's capacity as Assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Office of Security's Manhattan Field Office during the mid-1950's, he had become aware of the Agency's mail opening project, and although he had no direct connection with the project he knew it continued during the 1960's. As Chief Postal Inspector, he was the only postal official who was aware of the CIA's mail openings, and since his responsibilities included guaranteeing the sanctity of the mail, he was uncomfortable with his knowledge. 108a Partly because Cotter felt bound by his secrecy agreement with the Agency, 109 however, he did not inform the Postmaster General about HTLINGUAL, nor did he initially take any steps to terminate the project. 109a
Cotter's discomfort increased in January 1971 when he received a letter from Dr. Jeremy Stone, Director of the Federation of American Scientists, in which Stone inquired whether the Post Office ever permitted any federal agency to open first class letter mail. 110 Recognizing one of the names on the association's letterhead to be another former CIA employee who was also knowledgeable about the project, Cotter feared that Stone's inquiry may have been based on information supplied by this former agent. He forwarded a copy of the letter to Howard Osborn, then the CIA's Director of Security, and requested a meeting with Helms to discuss his concern about embarrassment to the Agency and to himself if the project were publicly revealed. Helms subsequently did meet with Cotter, who urged him to discuss the project with the Postmaster General. As Cotter later testified:
I felt . . . by getting the Postmaster General briefed by the CIA, the most senior people in the project, appropriate legal guidance could be obtained from the chief law officer, the Attorney General, and by pushing up to that arena if the project were unlawful I presumed it would have been stopped. But my concern was to get the top people aware of the project. 111
In addition to pressure from Cotter, the imminent reorganization of the Post Office also motivated Helms to arrange a briefing of Postmaster General Blount. In mid-1971, the Post Office was to become the Postal Service, and he felt that the consequent organization changes might have an adverse effect on the security of the New York operation. 112
Before meeting with the Postmaster General, Helms first spoke with Attorney General Mitchell. At this meeting, which is discussed in greater detail below, Helms recalls that he requested Mitchell's advice "as to whether this thing should be taken up with Mr. Blount because of [the Post Office reorganization]." 113 According to Helms, Mitchell encouraged him to brief the Postmaster General, and a meeting was set up between Mr. Blount and Mr. Helms for June 2, 1971.
The written record of the Blount-Helms meeting on June 2 consists of a "Memorandum for the Record" written by James Angleton which described Helms' comments to top level CIA officials, including Angleton, about his recent briefings of the Attorney General and the Postmaster General. In regard to the Blount briefing, this memorandum reads as follows:
The DCI then indicated that yesterday, 2 June 1971, he had seen Postmaster General Blount. Mr. Blount's reaction ... was entirely positive regarding the operation and its continuation. He opined that "nothing needed to be done," and rejected a momentarily held thought of his to have someone review the legality of the operation as such a review would, of necessity, widen the circle of witting persons. Mr. Helms explained to the PMG that Mr. Cotter, then Chief Postal Inspector, has been aware of the operation for a considerable period of time by virtue of having been on the staff of CIA's New York Field Office. Mr. Helms showed the Postmaster General a few selected examples of the operation's product, including an item relating to Eldridge Cleaver, which attracted the PM's special interest. 114
Helms' subsequent testimony generally supports the accuracy of this memorandum. On the question of whether or not Blount was informed that the New York project involved mail opening, he testified that "[i]t is my recollection that I told him we were opening mail in New York." 115
Blount recalls the meeting with Helms, but does not believe that he was informed about the mail opening aspects of the project. In public session, Mr. Blount testified:
Well, as I recall, Mr. Helms explained to me about a project that he told me had been going on for a great number of years. I don't know whether he said 15 years or what, but there was some indication in my mind that this had been going on for at least 15 years, that it was an ongoing project. It was a project of great sensitivity and great importance to the national security of this country and that he wanted to inform me about it.
... [M]y best recollection is, he told me this was a project in which the Post Office was cooperating with the CIA, that there were a couple of postal employees in New York City that I believe he told me were the only ones who really were involved or know about this project, that the way in which it operated was that the postal employee would remove from the mail stream letters going to the Soviet Union and give it to two or three CIA employees and whatever they did with it, it was reintroduced into the mail stream the next day. That's about the ending of my recollection. 116
He added that he did not recall either asking Helms what was done with the mail or being informed by him that the mail was opened by CIA agents. 117 While he did recall that Eldridge Cleaver's name was "mentioned," he did not believe that he was shown samples of Cleaver's opened mail or that Helms indicated in any way that Cleaver's mail had been opened. 118
On the statement in Angleton's memorandum that he "rejected a momentarily held thought of his to have someone review the legality of the operation", Blount agreed that he considered asking the General Counsel of that Post Office for a legal opinion, but insisted that this consideration was not based on his knowledge or assumption that mail was being opened. 119 Whatever doubts he had about the legality of the operation described by Helms were assuaged when Helms informed him that he had seen or was about to see the Attorney General on this matter. 120 Blount does not recall, however, ever discussing the legality -- or any other aspect of the project -- with the Attorney General personally, he accepted Helms' statement that Mitchell was knowledgeable about the project and "decided to let the Attorney General handle the legality of it." 121
Blount does not recall taking any action on the basis of his briefing by Helms; he made no further inquiries of the CIA or within his own Department about the conduct of the mail project and did not raise the matter with any other Cabinet officer or the President. As he later testified, "[M]y attitude was that if it is legal, I wanted to do what we could do to cooperate with the Central Intelligence Agency on a matter they considered of highest priority to this country and that dealt with national security." 122
Elmer T. Klassen. -- There is no evidence that Elmer Klassen, who succeeded Blount as Postmaster General in 1971 and remained in that position through the termination of the project in 1973, was ever briefed on any aspect of the New York project.
2. Chief Postal Inspectors
The various roles of the Chief Postal Inspectors in regard to the New York mail intercept operation have been alluded to above. It is sufficient here to note that while all of the men who held this office during the course of the project Clifton Garner (until 1953) ; David Stephens (1953 to 1961) ; Henry Montague (1961 to 1969) ; William Cotter (1969 to 1975) -- were apparently aware of the mail cover aspects, only one -- William Cotter -- clearly knew that mail was also being opened by the CIA.
Garner had initially been contacted in November 1952 by CIA officials in the Offices of Operations and Security and apparently consented to the first survey of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union in New York. 122a Montague helped implement this survey and the early operation of the project in 1953 in his position as Postal Inspector in Charge of the New York Region. 122b As Chief Postal Inspector in 1961, he also attended part of the briefing of Edward Day by Allen Dulles, Richard Helms, and Cornelius Roosevelt. 122c Stephens instructed Montague to cooperate with the CIA in regard to the project in 1953 and was present at the Summerfield briefing in May 1954. 122d There is no evidence (or claim by the CIA) that any of these three men knew that the CIA project involved the opening of mail, however. As noted above, Montague has also testified that Stephens instructed him, and he in turn instructed the CIA agents who visited him in 1953, that mail opening would not be permitted.
William Cotter was therefore the first Chief Postal Inspector who was clearly aware of all aspects of the mail project. Despite his initial reluctance to take any action on the basis of his knowledge, Cotter was instrumental in arranging the Helms-Blount briefing in 1971 and ultimately in the termination of the project in 1973. His role in the project's termination is discussed below. 122e
3. Attorneys General
There is no evidence in the record that any Attorney General before or after John Mitchell was ever informed about the CIA's New York project. At a minimum, Mitchell was briefed about certain CIA mail covers by Richard Helms on June 1, 1971, but as with the Day and Blount briefings, the evidence about Mitchell's knowledge of mail opening and the New York project specifically, tends to be contradictory.
The background for the Mitchell briefing has been described above: William Cotter, concerned about the letter he had received from Jeremy Stone and uncomfortable with his knowledge of the mail openings in New York, urged Richard Helms to discuss the operation with the Postmaster General; in addition, the imminent reorganization of the Post Office cast the future security of the project in doubt. Rather than go to the Postmaster General directly, Helms chose to consult first with the Attorney General, in part to seek Mitchell's opinion as to whether or not Mr. Blount should be informed. As Mr. Helms publicly explained,
... it was quite clear that [Mitchell] had a particular role for the President in sort of keeping an eye on intelligence matters and on covert action matters.... He was sort of, I think, a watchdog for the President, so I have consulted with Mr. Mitchell on a variety of the problems affecting the Agency over time that I would not have gone to the normal Attorney General about, nor would the normal Attorney General have been necessarily privy to these things. 123
According to a CIA memorandum dated June 3, 1971, two days after the June 1 meeting between the Director and the Attorney General, Helms told a group of ranking CIA officials that he had briefed Mitchell about the operation and "Mr. Mitchell fully concurred in the value of the operation and had no 'hang-ups' concerning it." 124 Helms elaborated on this meeting with Mitchell in his recent public testimony, stating that he
told him [Mitchell] about this operation, what it was doing for us, that it had been producing some information on foreign connections, dissidents, and terrorists, a subject in which he was intensely interested, and that we might have a problem when the U.S. Postal Service was founded. And I asked if it wouldn't be a good idea that I go and see the Postmaster General, Mr. Blount, and talk with him about this and see how he felt about it and to get some advice from him. And, it was my recollection that Mr. Mitchell acquiesced in this and said, "Go ahead and talk to Mr. Blount." 125
When asked whether or not he told Mitchell that the project involved the opening of mail, Helms replied: "... I don't recall whether I said specifically we are opening X numbers of letters. But the burden of my discussion with him, I don't see how it could have left any alternative in his mind because how do you find out what somebody is saying to another correspondent unless you have opened the letter?" 126
John Mitchell has acknowledged meeting with Helms on June 1, 1971, and recalls a discussion of "mail covers," but on the basis of his recollection denies that Helms told him mail was opened. 127 He does not remember being informed of any of the details of the New York operation, and believes that even the discussion of mail covers was in relation to an intelligence operation distinct from one that would fit the description of the New York project. 128 The former Attorney General testified that, as he recalled, "the discussion of the mail was ancillary to another discussion that was not extensive, and . . . it had to do with mail covers, or at least I assumed it [did] ..." 129 He added that he had no recollection of Helms' asking his advice as to whether or not the Postmaster General should be briefed on any CIA project, 130 and that the first time he became aware that the CIA had opened mail in the United States was when these operations were publicly revealed in 1974 and 1975. 131
James Angelton testified that he also met with John Mitchell during Mitchell's tenure as Attorney General, described the New York project to him, and showed him some samples of the product, specifically, a copy of a letter from Kathy Boudin. 132 Angelton does not recall the possible date of such a meeting, however.
Mitchell does not recall ever having met with Angelton, or even having heard his name until recently. 133
4. Presidents
There is no documentary evidence that any President ever authorized the CIA's New York mail opening project. With the possible exception of Lyndon Johnson in 1967 or 1968, there is no CIA claim that any President was even informed of it. 133a While proposals were made by CIA officials in 1954 and again in 1965 to advise the President of the existence of HTLINGUAL, it does not appear that these proposals were implemented. In the context of the so called "Huston Plan" deliberations, moreover, CIA officials actually withheld knowledge of the ongoing New York project from the President's representative and from President Nixon himself. And despite President Nixon's eventual refusal to authorize the use of "covert mail coverage" (mail opening) as an intelligence collection technique (after a brief period of approval), the CIA project continued without interruption for another two years.
1954 Proposals to Seek the Approval of President Eisenhower. -- In a January 4, 1954 memorandum from Sheffield Edwards, then Director of Security, to Allen Dulles, Director of Central Intelligence, it was recommended that the Director and the Postmaster General (after having been himself briefed) meet "and then seek oral approval of [the] President." 134 This recommendation was reiterated in a second memorandum from Edwards to Dulles eight days later. 135
In later years, it was assumed by some CIA officers that Dulles had in fact briefed President Eisenhower on the program. The 1969 review of the project by the Inspector General's staff, simply states, without citation: "It is believed that Mr. Dulles briefed President Eisenhower on this subject." 136 Richard Helms has also testified that "I always assumed that Mr. Dulles, before we went to see Mr. Summerfield, had checked this out with President Eisenhower. I do not recall his ever specifically saying [that] to me, that was sort of an assumption on my part, that something of this importance he would have checked out and he would have proceeded on to his appointed task of speaking to the Postmaster General." 137
Summerfield himself had only been informed of the mail cover aspects of the project in 1954, however; the Agency apparently never returned to inform him that mail opening later became the primary program objective. Helms added, moreover, that he had never seen any documentary confirmation of a meeting between Director Dulles and the President in regard to the project. 138 Beyond the proposals themselves and the later undocumented assumptions by CIA officials, there is no evidence that President Eisenhower was ever informed about any aspect of the New York operation.
1965 Proposal to Inform President Johnson. -- In 1965, the Long Subcommittee hearings on the use of mail covers and other investigative techniques by federal agencies caused the Agency serious concern about possible Congressional discovery and revelation of the project. It is noted above that in September 1965, as a result of this concern, CIA officials briefly considered informing Postmaster General Gronouski of the project. When this proposal was rejected, presumably because Gronouski had cooperated extensively with the Subcommittee, Thomas Karamessines, then Acting Deputy Director for Plans, "suggested that, in his opinion, the President would be more inclined to go along with the idea of the operation." 139 Karamessines "gave instructions that steps should be taken to arrange to pass through McGeorge Bundy to the President after the Subcommittee has completed its investigation." 140 Apparently, however, this was not clone. Mr. Bundy does not recall ever having been informed of the project; 140a neither Thomas Karamessines nor Richard Helms knew of any attempt to inform Bundy so that he could in turn inform the President; 141 and there is no documentary record of such an attempt.
The Helms-Johnson Meeting: 1967-1968. -- Although it does not appear that President Johnson was contemporaneously informed about the mail project after the 1965 recommendation to do so, Richard Helms claims that be may have advised him about it in 1967 or 1968. Toward the end of President Johnson's term in office, the President instructed Helms to prepare a report detailing the truth or falsity of columnist Drew Pearson's allegation about CIA assassination attempts. Helms recalls that the President also asked him whether the CIA was engaged in any other operations that "might be regarded as sensitive." 142 It is Helms' belief that they then "discussed two or three items, ... [and] it was at that time that I think I mentioned [the New York project]." 143 When asked whether or not he indicated to the President that mail was opened in connection with the project, Helms said that "[i]f I discussed this with President Johnson I would not have deluded him by using one terminology to convey something else. I would have said, 'We are getting into Russian mail,' or something. I was not that kind of fellow with people." 144 There are no CIA documents relating to this discussion, however, and Helms himself is not positive that it in fact occurred, only that "there was a possibility that I discussed ... this letter opening thing on that occasion." 145
Huston Plan: 1970. -- During the summer of 1970, the so-called "Huston Plan" meetings and report presented the CIA with a clear opportunity to inform the President of their mail opening project. 146 But this opportunity was apparently never taken.
As a result of his perceived need for more effective domestic intelligence, Richard Nixon instructed representatives of the major federal intelligence agencies to meet under the guidance of Tom Charles Huston and to prepare a series of options designed to achieve this goal. One of the options subsequently discussed at the four meetings that summer was the use of "covert mail coverage" (i.e. mail opening) directed against both foreign and domestic targets. Although the CIA's New York project was ongoing at the time, the CIA representatives at these meetings, James Angleton and Richard Ober, did not advise this group of intelligence experts about its existence, and the final report -- to which Angleton and Ober contributed and which Richard Helms signed -- was submitted to the President containing the statement that "covert coverage has been discontinued." 147 At no time was either Huston, the President's representative, or the President himself informed that the CIA was then opening mail.
According to Angleton, the New York project was not revealed to the group because it was considered to be compartmented knowledge and such a revelation would serve "no useful purpose," especially in light of the security considerations which had been articulated by the National Security Agency's representative. 148 But he also conceded that neither Huston nor the President himself were told about the project in private. 149
Of the statement in the final report that all covert mail coverage had been discontinued, Richard Helms said:
. . . the only explanation I have for it was that this applied entirely to the FBI and had nothing to do with the CIA, that we never advertised to this Committee or told this Committee that this mail operation was going on, and there was no intention of attesting to a lie . . .
And if I signed this thing, then maybe I didn't read it carefully enough.
There was no intention to mislead or lie to the President. 150
Helms agreed, however, that on the face of the report the President could not have known that covert mail coverage in fact continued, 151 and he stated that at no time did he personally ever inform President Nixon about the CIA's use of this technique in the New York project. 151a The President, in short, was given a report -- signed by Helms -- which explicitly said mail opening had been discontinued when it had not.
On July 23, 1970, Tom Charles Huston wrote Director Helms that the President had approved the relaxation of restrictions on a number of the investigative techniques discussed in the final report. 152 For the first time in the history of the CIA's mail project, the Agency had what appeared to be Presidential authorization for "covert mail coverage," although not specifically for the New York program, about which the President remained ignorant. 152a But five days after Huston informed Helms of the President's approval, the authorization was withdrawn and Helms was asked to return the memorandum reflecting the original approval. 153 Now the situation was reversed: a President had addressed the issue of the use of mail opening as an investigative technique and ultimately refused to endorse it. Despite the withdrawal of Presidential approval, however, the CIA did not terminate the New York project. The project continued for nearly three years after these events, and the CIA continued to open mail within the United States in the face of an apparent Presidential prohibition of this technique.
President Nixon's "General Awareness" of CIA Mail Covers but Not of Mail Openings. -- Former President Nixon recently stated that he was aware of the CIA's use of mail covers but not of its mail opening operations. He explained:
While President, I remember being generally aware of the fact that the Central Intelligence Agency, acting without a warrant, both during and prior to my Administration, conducted mail covers of mail sent from within the United States to:
A. The Soviet Union; or
B. The People's Republic of China
However, I do not remember being informed that such mail covers included unauthorized mail openings. 153a
He also noted that he did "not recall receiving information, while President, that any agency or employee of the United States Government, acting without a warrant, opened mail" in any program that would fit the description of the CIA's New York mail opening project or any other CIA or FBI mail opening project. 153b
There is no claim in the documentary record or in the testimony of any CIA official that the Agency ever informed President Nixon about any aspect of the New York project. Nor is there any claim that the President ever indicated to the CIA his approval of any aspect of this particular project, even the use of mail covers. Richard Helms, for example, testified in 1975 that he "never recall[ed] discussing [the New York mail opening project] with President Nixon," 153c and added (before the former President made the comments quoted above) that "What President Nixon knew about it, I don't know to this day." 153d
Dissemination of Information to the White Home. -- According to a March 1971 CIA memorandum, sanitized information generated by the New York mail opening project was disseminated to the White House even after the President's July 1970 rejection of the use of this technique. This memorandum lists the types of information accumulated through the project, including data about "peace activists, anti-government groups, black radicals and other militant dissidents." 154 It continues: "In all the above, HTLINGUAL provides the White House ... coverage of overseas contacts and activity of persons within the United States who are of critical concern from the viewpoint of internal national security, including bombing and terrorism." 155
At least one former White House official -- John D. Ehrlichman -- has testified that from his reading of the intelligence reports provided to the White House he was able to determine that mail was being intercepted. When asked whether he knew of a program of intercepting mail between the United States and Communist countries, Ehrlichman replied: "I knew that was going on because I had seen reports that cited those kinds of sources in connection with this, the bombings, the dissident activities" 156 He stated that he "assumed," 157 but was not positive, that this was a CIA operation: "Maybe the way the things is [sic] couched, it is always obscurely put as to what the sources are, but it could have been the FBI for all I know." 158 He did not know whether the President was aware of this program, 159 however, and could not recall ever personally discussing the matter with him. 160
Ehrlichman added that he did not know of any conversation within the White House about the legality or propriety of such a program nor of any inquiry made by the White House. 162
The lack of a formal approval structure for HTLINGUAL outside, as well as inside the CIA, is plain: Cabinet officers were sometimes briefed, but much more frequently ignored (sometimes consciously so) ; no documentary record reflects the one possible "mention" of the project to a President; another President was misled; and the closest resemblance to a Presidential policy directive prohibiting mail opening went unheeded.
It is difficult to generalize from an inconsistent record, but these are among the conclusions that may be tentatively offered in regard to external authorization for the project: the agency desired external authority but was reluctant to ask for it, either for fear of refusal, out of concern with security, or simply because it was less complicated to maintain the status quo. If Cabinet officers were informed of mail openings, it was done so circuitously; only the minimum knowledge necessary to secure their approval was imparted. The officers who were briefed, for their part, apparently did not want to know the details, did not want to be held accountable, and deferred to the Agency on national security matters.
E. Termination of the Project
1. Proposed Termination: The 1969 Inspector General's Report
Four years before the actual termination of the project, the Inspector General's staff formally recommended that consideration be given to discontinuance. Its 1969 survey of HTLINGUAL had revealed that:
The principal customer is and has been the FBI ... [which] several years ago initiated a similar program to cover mail to and from Bloc countries. It discontinued the program because of the inherent sensitivity, but would dislike having us discontinue a similar one. We are sympathetic to the Bureau's position, but question whether their interest is sufficient justification for our assuming risk of most serious embarrassment. 163
This finding, coupled with the conclusion that the project was "of little value to this Agency," 164 led the Inspector General's staff to recommend that the Director should negotiate with the FBI to take over the project or, in the event that the FBI should decline to assume responsibility, he should discontinue it.
Informally, the author of the 1969 report, John Glennon, had already discussed the possibility of an FBI takeover of the project with Sam Papich, Bureau liaison to the FBI, and he knew that there was virtually no chance the FBI would assume responsibility for it. According to Glennon, Papich told him "that the Bureau would not run it . . . and he implied that they just would not want to be involved in opening mail. I suppose because of the flap potential." 165 Glennon was not surprised by the Bureau's attitude. He testified:
[I]t was fine of the Bureau not to take it over because we should not be doing it in the first place. If somebody else is foolish enough to do it, I can see the Bureau wanting to take advantage of it . . . [and] if the Agency got egg on its face, the Bureau would not get egg on its face." 166
Because he knew the FBI would not take over the project, Glennon acknowledged that the recommendation in the 1969 report was, in effect, a straight recommendation to abandon HTLINGUAL. 167
When the 1969 report was presented to the Director, however, Helms did not attempt to engage the FBI in negotiations over responsibility for the project. Rather, he "asked to have the FBI contacted to find out their feeling about the value of this operation [and was] told that they thought it was valuable and would hate to see it terminated." 168 In balancing the perceived value to the FBI on the one hand, and the stated lack of value to several Agency components on the other, Helms decided in favor of continuing the project. 169
2. Increasing Security Risks: 1971
The question of terminating or turning over the project to the FBI came to the fore again in the spring of 1971, after Chief Postal Inspector William Cotter had received the letter from Dr. Jeremy Stone on behalf of the Federation of American Scientists inquiring whether the Post Office permitted any federal agencies to open mail. For reasons described above, Cotter viewed the letter as a genuine threat to the security of the New York project and believed his own position as Chief Postal Inspector would be seriously compromised if knowledge of the project were publicized. When he communicated his concern to Director of Security Howard Osborn, Osborn relayed it to Helms. Prompted by this new security risk, and possibly by additional security problems inherent in the imminent reorganizatioin of the Post Office, Helms convened a meeting of top CIA officials on May 19, 1971, to discuss the future of HTLINGUAL.
On the agenda were such security problems as the Stone letter, the postal clerk who brought the mail to the CIA's "interceptors" at JFK Airport, and Cotter's inability to testify truthfully before a Congressional committee that he had no knowledge of CIA mail opening. The subject of FBI exploitation of the project was also discussed. 170 Thomas Karamessines, the Deputy Director for Plans, forcefully argued that in light of these security risks CIA involvement in the project should cease, and the FBI should assume responsibility for it. According to the minutes of the meeting:
On the question of continuance, the DDP [Karamessines] stated that he is gravely concerned, for any flap would cause the CIA the worst possible publicity and embarrassment. He opined that the operation should be done by the FBI because they could better withstand such publicity, inasmuch as it is a type of domestic surveillance. The D/S [Howard Osborn] stated that he thought the operation served mainly a Bureau requirement. 171
James Angleton contended that the project should be continued by the Agency: "The C/CI [Angleton] countered that the Bureau would not take over the operation now, and could not serve essential CIA requirements as we have served theirs; that, moreover, CI Staff sees this operation as foreign surveillance." 172 When Helms asked whether or not the project should be continued "in view of the known risks," Angleton replied "that we can and should continue to live with them." 173
Apparently Helms was not entirely convinced by Angleton's arguments. At one point during the meeting, according to Howard Osborn, he turned to Angleton and asked, "If this project is so . . . important to the FBI, why ... don't they take it over?" 174 Osborn testified that Angleton responded by noting that the FBI could not do so under the stringent limitations on investigative techniques imposed by J. Edgar Hoover. 175
The course of action that Helms finally decided upon has been recited above: he met with Cotter personally and was urged to inform the Postmaster General; before informing Mr. Blount, he also called on Attorney General Mitchell. Since Helms believed that both of these Cabinet officers had assented to the mail opening operation, he again supported its continuance. When he reported the favorable results of these briefings to the same group of CIA officials at a subsequent meeting on June 3, the minutes of that meeting show that "all present were gratified". 176 The only instruction Helms gave to those in charge of the project was to tighten security measures, and the project continued.
3. William Cotter's Continuing Concern
The Secrecy Agreement and Cotter's Dilemma. -- After Helms briefed Blount on the Now York project, William Cotter recalls that he received a telephone call from Blount, who informed him that the briefing had occurred and instructed him, in effect, to "carry on with the project." 177 He was informed that the Attorney General had been advised of the project as well. Cotter's anxiety decreased with the knowledge that Blount and Mitchell had been briefed and apparently supported the project, 178 but his peace of mind proved to be shortlived: in the latter part of 1971, Blount resigned as Postmaster General, and Mitchell stepped down as Attorney General shortly thereafter. Cotter was again the highest ranking Government official outside of the CIA and FBI who knew of the CIA's mail opening project.
From the first days of his tenure as Chief Postal Inspector, Cotter had been concerned about the New York mail project. He testified:
I was aware that when I assumed the capacity of Chief Postal Inspector I became responsible for enforcing the Postal laws, [and I also] became aware of the high, high sensitivity of Postal Inspectors with regard to violations of Section 1702 [of Title 18 of the United States Code, which prohibits tampering with the mail]. We arrest people every day for ... opening mail, stealing, and so forth, and so I was very, very uncomfortable with [knowledge of this] project. 179
Entrusted with this responsibility, Cotter had felt constrained by the letter and the spirit of the secrecy oath, which he had signed when he left the CIA in 1969, "attesting to the fact that I would not divulge secret information that came into my possession during the time that I was with the CIA." 180 "After coming from eighteen years in the CIA," Cotter said, "I was hypersensitive, perhaps, to the protection of what I believed to be a most sensitive project . . ." 181 For this reason, he had written a response to the Jeremy Stone letter that by his own admission was untrue, explaining later that, "If I responded . . . accurately to Mr. Stone, it would have blown the whole operation for the CIA . . . " 182 For the same reason, he had never informed Postmaster General Blount about the project, although, as noted above, he encouraged Helms to do so after he had been Chief Postal Inspector for two years. The minutes of the May 19, 1971, meeting in Director Helms' office aptly summarized Cotter's situation: ". . . in an exchange between the DCI and the DDP it was observed that while Mr. Cotter's loyalty to the CIA could be assumed, his dilemma is that he owes loyalty now to the Postmaster General." 183
When Blount resigned, Cotter did not know whether the project had ever been described to Blount's former deputy and successor as Postmaster General, Elmer Klassen. He again chose not to raise the matter with the new Postmaster General directly, but began communicating his concern to Howard Osborn and Thomas Karamessines at the Agency. 184
Cotter's Ultimatum. -- Although Osborn and Karamessines were sympathetic to his position and were themselves convinced that the project should be stopped, Cotter's periodic expressions of concern resulted in neither a briefing of Postmaster General Klassen nor a termination of HTLINGUAL. "Since I wasn't getting any action on the part of the CIA," Cotter testified, "I suggested to Mr. Osborn that unless I received some indication that this project had been approved at an exceedingly high level in the United States Government, I was going to withdraw the Postal Service support." 185 Osborn recalls that Cotter specifically referred to authorization at the Presidential level -- he would no longer be satisfied by the Postmaster General's approval -- and that he set a deadline of February 15, 1973. 186
Effect Of Watergate. -- By the time Cotter presented the CIA with his ultimatum, the Watergate revelations had contributed to the creation of a national political climate vastly different from that during the project's infancy and growth. An increasing number of CIA officials connected with the Now York operation believed that the time was ripe for its termination and welcomed Cotter's position as an opportunity to force the reexamination of its relative advantages and disadvantages. Howard Osborn testified that he "shared [Cotter's] concern. I thought it was illegal and in the Watergate climate we had absolutely no business doing this." 187 He discussed the matter with William Colby, newly appointed DDP, who, according to Osborn, agreed that the project was illegal and should not be continued, "particularly in a climate of that type." 188
4. Schlesinger's Decision to Suspend the Project
When James Schlesinger, who had succeeded Richard Helms as Director of Intelligence, learned of Cotter's ultimatum, he scheduled briefings by Colby and James Angleton about the future of HTLINGUAL. Colby argued that the "substantial ... political risk [of revelation was] not justified by the operation's contribution to foreign intelligence and counterintelligence collection." 189 Angleton, a strong supporter of the project in the past, attempted to persuade the new Director that the operation was valuable and still merited continuance. 190
According to a contemporaneous memorandum by William Colby, Schlesinger was unconvinced that "the product to the CIA [was] worth the risk of CIA involvement." 191 The Director decided on a two-pronged course of action. First, he "directed the DDCI [Deputy Director Vernon Walters] to discuss the activity with the Acting Director, FBI (L. Patrick Gray], with a view to offering the FBI the opportunity to take over the project, including the offer to detailing the CIA personnel involved to the FBI to implement it under FBI direction and responsibility." 192 Second, Schlesinger agreed, in light of Cotter's ultimatum, to suspend the operation "unless Mr. Cotter would accept its continuance for the time being under our assurances that the matter is being prosecuted at a very high level." 193
Cotter refused to extend his deadline, and William Colby authorized the suspension of the project on February 15, 1973. Colby notified Howard Osborn of the suspension and Osborn instructed the Office of Security's Manhattan Field Office to shut down the operation that afternoon. There is no evidence that any attempt was subsequently made to secure Presidential approval, and when the FBI refused to assume operational responsibility (for reasons discussed below), the suspension proved to be permanent.
F. Legal Considerations and the "Flap Potential"
Within the Agency, the legality of the New York mail opening project was perceived to be dubious at best. Among those agents and officers connected with it who considered its legal implications at all, some believed that the project would have been illegal but for the 'internal and external approvals which they assumed -- sometimes erroneously -- had been granted. Most simply recognized HTLINGUAL to be illegal but rationalized it nonetheless. The general reaction to the questionable legality of the project was neither to stop it nor to seek a definitive opinion as to its legal status; it was to tighten security in order to reduce the risk of exposure to Congress and the general public. The evidence regarding its termination, moreover, suggests that it was finally discontinued not so much because it was thought to be illegal per se, as because the so-called "flap potential" -- the risk of embarrassment to the CIA that stemmed from its dubious legality -- was seen to outweigh its foreign intelligence and counterintelligence value to the Agency.
1. Perceptions of