CIA activities in the United States

1950
Starting in 1950, the CIA researched and experimented with the use of possible mind-control drugs and other chemical, biological and radiological stimuli on both willing and uninformed subjects. The purpose of these programs was to "investigate whether and how it was possible to modify an individual's behavior by covert means."

CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter approved the first mind-control study, named Project BLUEBIRD, which was later renamed Project ARTICHOKE.

Crusade for Freedom
1950 was the beginning of the Crusade for Freedom, a ten-year campaign to generate domestic support for Radio Free Europe (and to conceal the CIA as the primary source of RFE's funding).

Project MK-ULTRA
Project MKULTRA, or MK-ULTRA, is perhaps the most famous of the CIA mind-control programs. Experiments were conducted on CIA employees, military personnel, doctors, other government agents, prostitutes, prisoners, mentally ill patients, and members of the general public in order to study their reactions. Drugs were administered alone and in combination with other drugs and at varying doses and frequencies. The drugs included LSD, heroin, morphine, temazepam (used under code name MKSEARCH), mescaline, psilocybin, scopolamine, marijuana, alcohol, and sodium pentothal. In one case, LSD was given to subjects for 77 days straight. The project was later expanded to Canada, focusing on Nazi research and techniques for erasing memories and personalities. One of the most controversial issues surrounding Project MK-ULTRA involved the mysterious death of Dr. Frank Olson, a scientist at Fort Detrick, Maryland, where many of these studies were conducted. According to the government's version of events, as part of the MK-ULTRA experiments, Olson was dosed with LSD without his knowledge, and he suffered severe paranoia and a nervous breakdown. The CIA sent him to New York to see one of their psychiatrists, who recommended that Olson be placed into a mental institution for recovery. On his last night in New York, Olson allegedly threw himself out his hotel room window, plunging to his death. The circumstances leading up to Olson's fall remain unclear. A grand jury inquiry of Olson's death was approved on April 27, 1996 and on the same day former CIA chief William Colby disappeared and his remains were found in a lake.

Operation Mockingbird
Under Frank Wisner and the Office of Policy Coordination, Operation Mockingbird was set up to put anticommunist messages into US news media. Wisner recruited Philip Graham, publisher of the Washington Post, to run the news aspects of the operation. Columbia Broadcasting System began co-operating with the CIA. "To understand the role of most journalist‑operatives, it is necessary to dismiss some myths about undercover work for American intelligence services. Few American agents are “spies” in the popularly accepted sense of the term. “Spying” — the acquisition of secrets from a foreign government—is almost always done by foreign nationals who have been recruited by the CIA and are under CIA control in their own countries. Thus the primary role of an American working undercover abroad is often to aid in the recruitment and “handling” of foreign nationals who are channels of secret information reaching American intelligence.

"Many journalists were used by the CIA to assist in this process and they had the reputation of being among the best in the business. The peculiar nature of the job of the foreign correspondent is ideal for such work: he is accorded unusual access by his host country, permitted to travel in areas often off‑limits to other Americans, spends much of his time cultivating sources in governments, academic institutions, the military establishment and the scientific communities. He has the opportunity to form long‑term personal relationships with sources and—perhaps more than any other category of American operative—is in a position to make correct judgments about the susceptibility and availability of foreign nationals for recruitment as spies." Formal recruitment of reporters was generally handled at high levels—after the journalist had undergone a thorough background check. The actual approach might even be made by a deputy director or division chief. On some occasions, no discussion would he entered into until the journalist had signed a pledge of secrecy.

“The secrecy agreement was the sort of ritual that got you into the tabernacle,” said a former assistant to the Director of Central Intelligence. “After that you had to play by the rules.” David Attlee Phillips, former Western Hemisphere chief of clandestine services and a former journalist himself, estimated in an interview that at least 200 journalists signed secrecy agreements or employment contracts with the Agency in the past twenty‑five years. Phillips, who owned a small English‑language newspaper in Santiago, Chile, when he was recruited by the CIA in 1950, described the approach: “Somebody from the Agency says, ‘I want you to help me. I know you are a true‑blue American, but I want you to sign a piece of paper before I tell you what it’s about.’ I didn’t hesitate to sign, and a lot of newsmen didn’t hesitate over the next twenty years.”

Forerunner of Domestic Contact Service/OSINT
This function, run by the Domestic Contact Service(also called the Domestic Contact Division) of the CIA, was legal, as it did not violate the CIA prohibitions of police power or spying on Americans. It was a voluntary debriefing of Americans with useful information. It is now considered part of Open Source Intelligence OSINT.

Office of Current Intelligence
President Truman created the Office of Current Intelligence which was directed by Huntington D. Sheldon. This was a renamed and extended version of the World War II section of the OSS that gave White House and other high-level briefings.

National Student Association
From 1951 to 1962, CIA pays the National Student Association to spy on campus, both by funding the staff positions of the organization, and by enticing or coercing individual students to act as informants.

1952
The Robertson Panel was a committee commissioned by CIA in 1952 in response to widespread Unidentified Flying Object reports, especially in the Washington D.C. area. The panel was briefed on U.S. military activities and intelligence; hence the report was originally classified Secret. See article on Art Lundahl addressing discussions in 1967.

1952-1975
A number of projects, some run by NSA and some by CIA, intercepted mail and electronic communications of US citizens in the US. These programs were, by 1975, discontinued as illegal without warrants. Various interception programs under the George W. Bush administration have been restarted, although the Administration has not explained them, and claims no warrants are needed under the doctrine of unitary authority.

CIA, and the rest of the intelligence community, receives product from thousands of NSA SIGINT programs. During this same period, CIA received extensive SIGINT on Southeast Asia and the Soviet bloc, and the rest of the world, and used this in preparing analytical products. Among these, for example, are nearly 200 National Intelligence Estimates on Southeast Asia, plus monthly summaries for Vietnam and specific studies relevant to military operations.

Among these were Project SHAMROCK and Project MINARET surveillance data on Americans, judged inappropriate by the Director of NSA and shut down by 1975. Much to the surprise of some, not everything CIA received from NSA involved impropriety.

Another program, HTLINGUAL intercepted physical mail, first simply recording the source and destination addresses on the envelope, and later surreptitiously opening and reading mail. This ran from 1952 to 1973.

1973
"After Colby left the Agency on January 28, 1976, and was succeeded by George Bush, the CIA announced a new policy: “Effective immediately, the CIA will not enter into any paid or contractual relationship with any full‑time or part‑time news correspondent accredited by any U.S. news service, newspaper, periodical, radio or television network or station” At the time of the announcement, the Agency acknowledged that the policy would result in termination of less than half of the relationships with the 50 U.S. journalists it said were still affiliated with the Agency. The text of the announcement noted that the CIA would continue to “welcome” the voluntary, unpaid cooperation of journalists. Thus, many relationships were permitted to remain intact."

1977
Notre Dame law professor G. Robert Blakey, counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations, states that the CIA withheld information from the Warren Commission and the Congressional Committee he represented.

According to a 1977 New York Times article, the CIA conducted a covert propaganda campaign to squelch criticism of the Warren Report. The CIA urged its field stations to use their "propaganda assets" to attack those who didn't agree with the Warren Report. In a dispatch from CIA headquarters, the Agency instructed its stations around the world to:


 * 1) counteract the "new wave of books and articles criticizing the [Warren] Commission's findings...[and] conspiracy theories ...[that] have frequently thrown suspicion on our organization";
 * 2) "discuss the publicity problem with liaison and friendly elite contacts, especially politicians and editors;" and
 * 3) "employ propaganda assets to answer and refute the attacks of the critics. ... Book reviews and feature articles are particularly appropriate for this purpose. ... The aim of this dispatch is to provide material for countering and discrediting the claims of the conspiracy theorists..."

In 1997 the CIA came forward to admit its historical interest in UFOs.