The United States President's Commission on CIA Activities within the United States was ordained by President Gerald Ford in 1975 to investigate the activities of the Central Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies within the United States. The Presidential Commission was led by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, from whom it gained the nickname the Rockefeller Commission.
The commission was created in response to a December 1974 report in The New York Times that the CIA had conducted illegal domestic activities, including experiments on US citizens, during the 1960s. The commission issued a single report in 1975, touching upon certain CIA abuses including mail opening and surveillance of domestic dissident groups. It also publicized Project MKUltra, a CIA mind control research program.
Several weeks later, committees were established in the House and Senate for a similar purpose. White House Personnel, including future vice president Dick Cheney, edited the results, excluding many of the commission's findings from the final report. Some of these findings were included in later reports by the Congressional Committees.
Before it was even released, the report faced scrutiny from the media, and was deemed a "whitewash". The investigation was intended to be independent of Presidential interference, but the findings and recommendations included in the final report were highly altered from what was chosen by the commission itself. It was ultimately superseded in notability by the more substantial Church Committee in what became known as the "Year of Intelligence".
Background In 1974, a New York Times article was published that accused the CIA of illegal operations committed against US citizens. Authored by Seymour M. Hersh, it documented an intelligence operation against the anti-war movement, as well as "break-ins, wiretapping and the surreptitious inspection of mail" conducted since the 1950s. According to former CIA Official Cord Meyer, these disclosures "Convinced large sections of the American public that the CIA had become a domestic Gestapo and stimulated an overwhelming demand for the wide-ranging congressional investigations that were to follow."
Hersh had been tipped off to the possibility of an "in house operation" by an unidentified member of the CIA in spring of 1974. He embarked on an investigation, speaking to sources that included CIA Chief of Counterintelligence James Angleton. Although he was not aware of its existence, Hersh uncovered much information that had been documented in the "Family Jewels", a report ordered by Director of Central Intelligence William Colby that chronicled CIA abuses over the past 25 years. The report would not be formally revealed to the public until 2007.
Monitoring of anti-war movement and Project MINARET
The article alleged that CIA agents had followed and photographed participants in the antiwar movement, as well as other demonstrations. It also reported that the CIA "set up a network of informants who were ordered to penetrate antiwar groups", and even placed an avowedly anti-war congressperson under surveillance while putting other lawmakers in a dossier on dissident Americans.
Instituted in 1967 by the NSA, Project MINARET's purpose was to document "Soviet, Chinese, and North Vietnamese influence over the militant civil rights and anti–Vietnam War movements" for the CIA and FBI, according to historian Donald Critchlow. The NSA provided CIA and FBI officials with reports of intercepted international communications by certain individuals in these movements. NSA officials stipulated that FBI and CIA agents must destroy or return these reports within two weeks of receiving them. The NSA also required that "the reports not be 'identified with the National Security Agency' and that all records relating to this program were 'not serialize[d]' or filed with other NSA records, were classified 'Top Secret,' and were stamped 'Background Use Only'... because they recognized that this interception program violated the Communications Act of 1934."
MKUltra
Throughout the 1950s and 60s, the CIA conducted Project MKUltra, consisting of illegal experiments on unwitting subjects, largely American but including Canadian and Danish citizens, as well as CIA detainees at foreign sites. The purpose of these experiments was to develop new interrogation techniques based on mind control, particularly through a "truth drug." Subjects were administered high doses of LSD, as well as more extreme forms of torture overseas such as "electroshock, extremes of temperature, [and] sensory isolation."
Assassinations The assassination of President John F. Kennedy had originally been investigated by the Warren Commission. Some of its elements, specifically the backward head snap seen in the Zapruder film and the possible presence of CIA operatives in Dallas, were addressed in the Rockefeller Commission. The commission also found evidence of CIA plans to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, Dominican Republic President Rafael Trujillo, and mentions of Congolese President Patrice Lumumba and Indonesia's President Sukarno.
Commission establishment Dick Cheney encouraged President Ford to create the commission, laying out four goals in a December 27, 1974, note: to examine the charges against the CIA, to avoid being "tarnished by controversy," to install "safeguards on intelligence" and to ensure the CIA's ability to operate was not inhibited.
Ford appointed his vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, to head the commission. Future president and former governor of California Ronald Reagan was chosen as a member, along with former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Lyman Lemnitzer. Dean Rusk turned down a membership request from the White House. Representative Samuel Stratton volunteered, but neither he nor any other members of Congress were selected. Generals Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor were both considered, but Lemnitzer was chosen instead. The commission was established on January 4, 1975.
In a dinner with New York Times executives and editors later that January, Gerald Ford revealed the issue of CIA assassination plots, sparking media and public interest in the subject and injecting it into the "Year of Intelligence."
Investigation
Operation Mongoose, Castro assassination attempts and Cuban operations According to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, the CIA, along with the State Department, Defense Intelligence Agency, and Justice Department provided the commission documents on the planning of covert operations in Cuba, including assassination attempts on Fidel Castro, from 1960 to 1964. These documents largely dealt with Operation Mongoose, along with the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban missile crisis. Details such as minutes of meetings of anti-Castro planning groups, "reports on their operations, and memoranda between the individuals involved" were included.
Furthermore, the Ford Library holds "transcripts of sworn testimony and interviews conducted by Rockefeller Commission staff with former CIA, State Department, and Defense Department officials from the 1960s regarding what they knew about plans to assassinate foreign leaders and about the connection between the Cuba operations and organized crime."
Kennedy assassination The commission investigated allegations that the CIA was involved in the assassination of President Kennedy. These included claims of CIA relationships with Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Furthermore, the alleged presence of CIA Agents E. Howard Hunt and Frank Sturgis in Dallas at the time of the assassination, and allegations that they had fired the "shots from the grassy knoll", were investigated.
According to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum, "The Commission heard testimony, taped interviews, took depositions, consulted experts in forensic pathology and ballistics, examined photographic evidence, and requested documents from various intelligence and law enforcement agencies." Witness testimonies and exhibits, many of which were unsolicited, were utilized. The Zapruder film was analyzed, along with other photographs and documents from agencies including the CIA, and Kennedy's autopsy materials were examined by a panel of medical consultants. The commission ultimately upheld the Warren Commission's finding that there was one assassin and found no link between the CIA and Oswald or Ruby, calling the allegations "farfetched speculation."
Relationship with Church Committee and dissolution As of mid-April 1975, Commission Lawyer David Belin "expected to have the assassination portion of the panel report complete by the end of the month. He so informed White House officials. However, the CIA dragged its feet on providing materials, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who initially promised cooperation, provided little", according to the National Security archive.
The commission had an at times contentious relationship with the Church Committee, as both were seeking out the same CIA documents, including the "Family Jewels". This went as far as Senator Church speculating that documents were being withheld from his committee by Rockefeller's. This led him, along with Senator John Tower, Committee Chief Counsel Fritz Schwartz and Minority Counsel Smothers, to personally visit Vice President Rockefeller in early May 1975. The committee members requested access to the evidence and transcripts possessed by the Rockefeller Commission but were denied by the Vice President, who cited the need for the President himself to grant them access. Ford had ordered the commission to extend its life by two months in order to investigate CIA assassinations, but on May 25 the commission moved to drop the assassinations and close its investigation. On June 9 the President publicly promised the Rockefeller Commission's files to the Church Committee, and they were delivered after two weeks and additional requests.
Even after the Rockefeller investigation ended, Church Committee's members complained in private that they were being denied access to CIA documents by both the White House and the agency itself, receiving less access than the Rockefeller Commission had.
CIA cooperation The investigators sought CIA documents on assassination plots conducted in its history and information on administrative routines and questioned key witnesses. One of these witnesses, CIA lawyer John S. Warner, admitted that "the agency had 'no specific authorization' to conduct assassinations." He added that he was "'not clear' that a president had the constitutional authority to order an assassination, though that 'might' lie within his powers."
Peter Clapper, director of public affairs for the commission, in a message to David Belin, "criticized the CIA for the many holes in its written records" and asserted that "the Agency did not in every case cooperate fully with the Commission.'" He ultimately dismissed the agency as less than trustworthy. However, he did admit that the commission had "largely a public relations job," as opposed to the reform it ostensibly pursued.
Despite misgivings, Clapper laid extensive potential reforms to the CIA. This included legislation that prevented it from "withholding intelligence", as well as destroying records. In the realm of civil rights, he also asserted that Agents should be required to report any harassment of American citizens to the President, that only essential mail and files should be seized, and that "the civil rights of foreign citizens who defect to the United States" should be protected.