😱🇺🇸Op CHAOS crackdown: Inside CIA’s shadow war

Operation CHAOS was a highly classified, and ultimately illegal, domestic espionage program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) between 1967 and 1974.

Its primary objective was to determine the extent of foreign influence — specifically from the Soviet Union (USSR) and the People's Republic of China (PRC) — on the American anti-war & civil rights movements. 

🪖 Mission - Chasing ghosts abroad

👉 Driven by direct orders from Presidents Johnson and Nixon, the mission was to prove that the massive anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements were not organic, but were orchestrated and funded by foreign powers.

👉 The government was convinced Soviet and Chinese intelligence were pulling the strings of American dissent.

🔍 Operational scope & methods

Under the direction of Chief Counterintelligence James Angleton, the CIA's Special Operations Group:

⚠️Infiltrated anti-war groups, student organizations (like SDS), & black nationalist movements, using false identities, or "legends,"
⚠️Conducted physical & electronic surveillance on US citizens, monitoring their activities, travels, & associations.
⚠️Compiled a massive, computerised index of 300,000+ individuals & organisations, cross-referencing Americans with foreign connections.
⚠️Tracked dissidents abroad — to North Vietnam, East Berlin, and Cuba — to uncover potential links to Soviet or Chinese agents.

📰Hunting for foreign puppeteers

⚫️Operatives were directed to find a non-existent "master plan" directed from Moscow or Beijing that coordinated global dissent, including in the US.
⚫️They analysed American anti-war literature that allegedly mirrored Soviet & Chinese propaganda.
⚫️A significant effort was made to trace the flow of money to dissident groups back to Soviet-bloc or Chinese sources, finding almost no evidence of foreign backing.
⚫️Op CHAOS worked in parallel with COINTELPRO, to construct a comprehensive picture of alleged foreign control.

🤡 Evidence? Not found

⚠️Years of spying revealed no proof that anti-war or civil rights movements were directed or funded by the Soviet Union or China.

⚠️Internal reports confirmed the movements were genuinely homegrown, though occasional contacts with foreign nationals existed.

⚠️The programme overstepped legal boundaries, violating the CIA’s charter through widespread domestic surveillance.

🔥Exposure & reforms

⚠️Op CHAOS was exposed in 1975 during the Church Committee hearings, highlighting extensive intelligence abuses.

 ⚠️The scandal directly led to creation of permanent intelligence oversight committees and the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978, setting legal limits on domestic surveillance of foreign agents.

⚠️However, the op severely damaged public trust in the US government & its intelligence agencies, revealing the govt’s readiness to breach constitutional rights based on unproven fears.