Project RESISTANCE

Project RESISTANCE was run by the Office of Security of the Central Intelligence Agency, the companion of Project MERRIMAC. The Senate committee described it as "a broad effort to obtain general background information for predicting violence which might create threats to CIA installations, recruiters, or contractors, and for security evaluation of CIA applicants. From 1967 until 1973 the program compiled information about radical groups around the country, particularly on campuses."¹

Growth

"In February 1967 the Office of Security had directed its field offices to report on the possibilities of violence or harassment at those schools which CIA recruiters planned to visit." The wider program "was initiated by the Deputy Director of the CIA for Support, whose directorate included the Office of Security, and who previously had been a Director of Security himself. In December 1967 he requested the Office of Security to study campus dissidence on a systematic basis." A Targets Analysis Branch of four or five persons was set up in May 1968. It read the Washington, New York, and Chicago dailies, "underground newspapers such as the Los Angeles Free Press and the Berkeley Barb," the Communist press, and college papers, and issued weekly situation reports. "Eventually the project developed an estimated 600-700 files and indexed an estimated 12,000 to 16,000 names."¹²

Restraint and End

By late 1970 the director of security, Howard Osborn, "felt that some of the field offices might be going too far in developing information from cooperating confidential sources." A headquarters memorandum of January 6, 1971, instructed: "No attempts should be made to recruit new informants or sources such as campus or police officials for the express purpose of obtaining information regarding dissident groups, individuals, or activities." The project was terminated at the end of June 1973, six weeks after Osborn's report to the management committee for the Family Jewels.¹