CIA Office of Security

The Office of Security was the component of the Central Intelligence Agency that investigated prospective employees, contractors, and consultants. An agency paper of 1973 described the work as "neighborhood inquiries, checks with other Government agencies, review of credit reports, and interviews with former employers and business associates," and said of the product: "The resulting files are held separately by the Office of Security and are not merged with other Agency files." Colonel Sheffield Edwards directed it in the early 1960s. Howard Osborn became director on July 1, 1964.¹

The Osborn Memorandum

On May 16, 1973, in answer to the order of Director James Schlesinger that produced the Family Jewels, Osborn sent the agency's management committee "summaries of activities conducted either by or under the sponsorship of the Office of Security in the past which in my opinion conflict with the provisions of the National Security Act of 1947." He began the survey at March 1959, "because I believe that the activities occurring since that time still have a viable 'flap potential' in that many of the people involved, both Agency and non-Agency are still alive." Each activity, he wrote, "was approved by higher authority." His list opened with Johnny Roselli: "The use of a member of the Mafia in an attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro." It went on to Project MOCKINGBIRD, telephone taps installed on two Washington newsmen from March 12 to June 15, 1963, to the confinement of Yuri Nosenko, to "Equipment Support to Local Police," and to a "Test of Specialized Equipment in Miami Immediately Prior to the Political Convention."¹

The Syndicate

In August 1960 Richard Bissell asked Edwards whether the office had assets for "a sensitive mission requiring gangster-type action" against Castro. The director was briefed and approved. J.C. King, chief of the Western Hemisphere Division, was told, and the JMWAVE station was not. Robert Maheu, "a cleared source of the Office of Security," produced Roselli, who brought in "Sam Gold" and "Joe," who were Sam Giancana and Santos Trafficante. James O'Connell of the office was Roselli's case officer from September 14, 1960, until May 1962, when William Harvey took him over. Poison pills from the Technical Services Division went to Cuba through Juan Orta and then through Tony Varona.¹

When Maheu's men were arrested for a wiretap in Las Vegas, Edwards briefed Attorney General Robert Kennedy. "At our request, prosecution was dropped." On May 7, 1962, Edwards and the general counsel, Lawrence Houston, briefed Kennedy on the operation itself. "If you have seen Mr. Kennedy's eyes get steely and his jaw set and his voice get low and precise you get a definite feeling of unhappiness," Houston testified. The inspector general concluded in 1967 that "the Attorney General was not told that the gambling syndicate operation had already been reactivated nor as far as we know was he ever told that CIA had a continuing involvement with U.S. gangster elements."¹²

In May 1975 the director of security, Charles W. Kane, answered the Church Committee's questions from the office's files: the operation "was approved by Allen Dulles, who was DCI at the time"; a memorandum of May 14, 1962, in Roselli's file "reflects that the 'Agency' had authorized $150,000 to accomplish the operation, however, neither the memorandum nor the above files indicate who approved the actual figure"; and an undated, unsigned memorandum in Maheu's file recorded that Varona "had been given $10,000 plus $1,000 worth of communications equipment" before "the 'deal' was called off after the Bay of Pigs." "These files contain only one reference to any actual expenditure of funds in connection with the Castro operation."³

Nosenko

The KGB defector Yuri Nosenko was held from August 13, 1965, to October 27, 1967, in a specially built cell, "literally confined in a room with nothing but a cot in it." The compilation records that "this Office together with the Office of General Counsel became increasingly concerned with the illegality of the Agency's position." On the second date he was transferred to the Office of Security under Admiral Rufus Taylor, the deputy director, moved to a safehouse, "and was interviewed under friendly, sympathetic conditions by his Security Case Officer, Mr. Bruce Solie, for more than a year. It soon became apparent that Nosenko was bona fide." The paper called him "the most valuable and economical defector this Agency has ever had."¹

Mail, Dissidents, and Reporters

"Since 1953, this office has operated a mail intercept program of incoming and outgoing Russian mail" at Kennedy Airport in New York, SRPOINTER, which "included not only the photographing of envelopes but also surreptitious opening and photographing of selected items of mail. The bulk of the take involved matters of internal security interest which was disseminated to the Federal Bureau of Investigation." Of the agency's New York mail-opening project, HTLINGUAL, which James Jesus Angleton defended as "foreign surveillance," Osborn testified in 1975: "We got no benefit from it at all. The product was worthless." At a meeting on May 19, 1971, Thomas Karamessines argued that "any flap would cause the CIA the worst possible publicity," and Osborn "stated that he thought the operation served mainly a Bureau requirement." Richard Helms continued it.¹⁴

From February 1967 to November 1971 an Office of Security proprietary, Project MERRIMAC, "recruited and handled several Agents for the purpose of covertly monitoring dissident groups in the Washington area considered to be potential threats to Agency personnel and installations. One of these Agents so successfully penetrated one dissident group that she was turned over to the FBI for handling." The office gave equipment and training to the police of Fairfax and Arlington counties and to the intelligence division of the Metropolitan Police Department.¹

"At the direction of the DCI," it kept Michael Getler of the Washington Post under physical surveillance in late 1971 and January 1972, CELOTEX I, and then Jack Anderson and his assistants Brit Hume, Les Whitten, and Joseph Spear from February to April 1972, CELOTEX II. An observation post was taken in the Statler Hilton opposite the reporters' offices, "to attempt to determine" their sources. In March and April 1972, as BUTANE, it watched Victor Marchetti, who was writing a book.¹

Private Security Firms

In November 1967 Harvey, leaving the agency for a law practice, asked the bureau's liaison, Sam Papich, for reputable private investigators. Osborn recorded that Papich suggested the Wackenhut Corporation or the Fidelifax company. In July 1978 Solie certified that the staff of the House Select Committee on Assassinations had reviewed the office's Wackenhut file.⁵