Operation CHAOS - Aftermath

Aftermath

In 1973, amid the uproar of the Watergate break-in, involving two former CIA officers, Operation CHAOS was closed. The secret nature of the former program however was exposed when Seymour Hersh published an article in the New York Times titled Huge CIA Operation Reported in US Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years on December 22, 1974. The following year, further details were revealed during Representative Bella Abzug's House Subcommittee on Government Information and individual Rights. The government, in response to the revelations, launched the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (The Rockefeller Commission), led by then Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, to investigate the depth of the surveillance. Richard Cheney, then Deputy White House Chief of Staff, is noted as stating of the Rockefeller Commission; it was to avoid " ... congressional efforts to further encroach on the executive branch."

Following the revelations by the Rockefeller Commission, then DCI, George H. W. Bush, stated: "... the operation in practice resulted in some improper accumulation of material on legitimate domestic activities."