CIA Documents Shed More Light on Agency's Interest in Student Dissenters

The Chronicle:

Information about Operation CHAOS is part of the much-discussed cache. In particular, a number of documents concern a 1968 study of student dissent, entitled 'Restless Youth,' that was prepared by the agency for President Lyndon B. Johnson.

In two memoranda dated May 7, 1973, the agency's director of current intelligence informed Mr. Schlesinger of a series of episodes in which the agency had assessed and produced reports on the level of foreign involvement in the antiwar movement. One memo (Document No. 193 in Tuesday's release) states that a late 1967 review of the evidence of such links by the agency -- disseminated via memoranda -- had concluded that 'there was some evidence of ad-hoc contacts between antiwar activists at home and abroad but no evidence of direction or formal coordination.'

The other May 7 memo (Document No. 190 in Tuesday's release) gives details of the genesis of the 'Restless Youth' report, which was given to President Johnson in September 1968. The memo states that a national-security adviser, Walt W. Rostow -- who later was a professor of economics and history at the University of Texas at Austin -- asked the agency to put together a report on worldwide student unrest. ...

The chapter of "Restless Youth" on domestic student dissenters, "Student Dissent and Its Techniques in the U.S.," was sent to President Johnson in January 1968. Much of that document focused on Students for a Democratic Society, known as SDS, and drew heavily on FBI intelligence about the group. ...

The material on "Restless Youth" contained in the "family jewels" material is particularly illuminating about the agency's desire to conceal its interests and reporting on a U.S.-based organization, which was strictly forbidden by the agency's charter. ...

"The paper 'Restless Youth' is sensitive because of its subject matter," states the 1968 memo, "because of the likelihood that public exposure of the agency's interest in the problem of student dissidence would result in considerable notoriety, particularly in the university world, and because pursuant to Mr. Rostow's instructions, the author included in his text a study of student radicals in the United States, thereby exceeding the agency's charter."

Post hoc rationalization of paranoia. Not.
The agents apparently complained about having to wear long hair and beards. I hope they got lice, and not much sex.