Operation CHAOS

Operation CHAOS: The CIA expansion of COINTELPRO

Operation CHAOS was launched in 1967 by the CIA under the presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson and rapidly expanded under Richard Nixon; directly targeting civil rights activists, anti-war protesters with the goal to smash any form of rebellion against the US Government with a fist of iron.

Underneath the umbrella the CIA launched a plethora of operations targeting sectors of the American public, these included:

HTLINGUAL - Directed at letters passing between the United States and the then Soviet Union; the program involved the examination of correspondence to and from individuals or organizations placed on a watchlist.

Project 2 - Directed at infiltration of foreign intelligence targets by agents posing as dissident sympathizers and which, like CHAOS, had placed agents within domestic radical organizations for the purposes of training and establishment of dissident credentials.

Project MERRIMAC - Designed to infiltrate domestic antiwar and radical organizations thought to pose a threat to security of CIA property and personnel.

Project RESISTANCE - Worked with college administrators, campus security and local police to identify anti-war activists and political dissidents without any infiltration taking place.

Under these operations a plethora of anti-war groups were targeted due to their alleged funding by foreign agencies, a claim which was baseless to begin with, and saught to paint any form of dissent against the government as merely the result of foreign meddling and not their population expressing legitimate displeasure with the actions of their government, some of the groups targeted by this campaign were as follows:

Students for a Democratic Society

Black Panther Party

Young Lords

Women Strike for Peace

Ramparts Magazine

Needless to say at the end of this campaign the Director of Central Intelligence (Richard Helms) found "no evidence of any contact between the most prominent peace movement leaders and foreign embassies in the U.S. or abroad." - the CIA operation was first exposed by the investigative journalist Seymour Hersh in his 1974 article titled: 'Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years.'

This is just one of many operations carried out by the US Government which directly targeted and terrorized it's population, but it with the combination of COINTELPRO set a standard for the use of agent provocateurs within America.

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