Black bag operation

Last updated

Collection of burglar's tools, with objects such as lockpicks, drills, skeleton keys such as are used in black bag jobs. Police Chief William Desmond's collection of burglars' tools and criminal curios displayed at the 1904 World's Fair.jpg
Collection of burglar's tools, with objects such as lockpicks, drills, skeleton keys such as are used in black bag jobs.

Black bag operations or black bag jobs are covert or clandestine entries into structures to obtain information for human intelligence operations. [1]

Contents

Some of the tactics, techniques, and procedures associated with black bag operations are lock picking, safe cracking, key impressions, fingerprinting, photography, electronic surveillance (including audio and video surveillance), mail manipulation (flaps and seals), and forgery. The term "black bag" refers to the small bags in which burglars stereotypically carry their tools.

History

In black bag operations, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents entered offices of targeted individuals and organizations, and photographed information found in their records. This practice was used by the FBI from 1942 through the 1960s. In July 1966, FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover allegedly ordered the practice discontinued. [2] President Nixon in 1970 proposed the Huston Plan to reintroduce black bag jobs, but Hoover opposed this, and approval was revoked five days after it was approved. [3]

Prior to it being discontinued, there had been over two hundred instances of black bag jobs organized by the FBI, for purposes other than installing microphones (as well as over 500 warrant-less microphone installations). These were approved in writing by Hoover as well as by Hoover's deputy Clyde Tolson, with most records being destroyed after the job was complete. [4] Agents that performed the jobs were trained in lock studies or electronic surveillance. In many cases, lock-picking was not required and a key could be accessed from a landlord, hotel manager, or a neighbor. [5]

However, William C. Sullivan and W. Mark Felt subsequently testified that Hoover and acting FBI director L. Patrick Gray III authorized "black bag" jobs against the Weather Underground from 1970 to 1973. [6] [7]

The use of "black bag jobs" by the FBI was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court on 19 June 1972 in the Plamondon case, United States v. U.S. District Court , 407 U.S. 297. The FBI still carries out numerous "black bag" entry-and-search missions, in which the search is covert and the target of the investigation is not informed that the search took place. If the investigation involves a criminal matter, a judicial warrant is required; in national security cases the operation must be approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court. [8]

In 1947, after American spy Elizabeth Bentley had defected from the Soviet underground and had started talking to the FBI, the FBI broke into her Brooklyn hotel to do a "black bag job" to verify her own background – and to look for anything that would invoke suspicion. "They found nothing out of the ordinary." [9] Bentley had learned how to dodge such intrusions from her earliest days in the underground:

She learned how to determine if enemy agents had discovered secret documents in her possession. "If I had to leave the apartment, I was careful to put them in my black trunk and tie a thin black thread around it so that I would know if they had been tampered with in my absence." [10]

The CIA has used black bag operations to steal cryptography and other secrets from foreign government offices outside the United States. The practice (by preceding U.S. intelligence organizations) dates back at least as far as 1916. [11]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">COINTELPRO</span> Series of covert and illegal projects by the FBI

COINTELPRO was a series of covert and illegal projects conducted between 1956 and 1971 by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting American political organizations that the FBI perceived as subversive. Groups and individuals targeted by the FBI included feminist organizations, the Communist Party USA, anti-Vietnam War organizers, activists in the civil rights and Black power movements, environmentalist and animal rights organizations, the American Indian Movement (AIM), Chicano and Mexican-American groups like the Brown Berets and the United Farm Workers, and independence movements. Although the program primarily focused on organizations that were part of the broader New Left, they also targeted white supremacist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and the National States' Rights Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Federal Bureau of Investigation</span> U.S. federal law enforcement agency

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is the domestic intelligence and security service of the United States and its principal federal law enforcement agency. An agency of the United States Department of Justice, the FBI is a member of the U.S. Intelligence Community and reports to both the Attorney General and the Director of National Intelligence. A leading U.S. counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigative organization, the FBI has jurisdiction over violations of more than 200 categories of federal crimes.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Edgar Hoover</span> American law-enforcement administrator (1895–1972)

John Edgar Hoover was an American attorney and law enforcement administrator who served as the fifth and final Director of the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) and the first Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). President Calvin Coolidge first appointed Hoover as director of the BOI, the predecessor to the FBI, in 1924. After 11 years in the post, Hoover became instrumental in founding the FBI in June 1935, where he remained as director for an additional 37 years until his death in May 1972 – serving a total of 48 years leading both the BOI and the FBI under eight Presidents.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alger Hiss</span> Alleged Soviet agent and American diplomat (1904–1996)

Alger Hiss was an American government official accused in 1948 of having spied for the Soviet Union in the 1930s. The statute of limitations had expired for espionage, but he was convicted of perjury in connection with this charge in 1950. Before the trial, Hiss was involved in the establishment of the United Nations, both as a US State Department official and as a UN official. In later life, he worked as a lecturer and author.

A covert listening device, more commonly known as a bug or a wire, is usually a combination of a miniature radio transmitter with a microphone. The use of bugs, called bugging, or wiretapping is a common technique in surveillance, espionage and police investigations.

A covert operation or undercover operation is a military or police operation involving a covert agent or troops acting under an assumed cover to conceal the identity of the party responsible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act</span> 1978 United States federal law

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 is a United States federal law that establishes procedures for the surveillance and collection of foreign intelligence on domestic soil.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Church Committee</span> Committee investigating governmental abuses in the US intelligence community

The Church Committee was a US Senate select committee in 1975 that investigated abuses by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), National Security Agency (NSA), Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church (D-ID), the committee was part of a series of investigations into intelligence abuses in 1975, dubbed the "Year of Intelligence", including its House counterpart, the Pike Committee, and the presidential Rockefeller Commission. The committee's efforts led to the establishment of the permanent US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tradecraft</span> Espionage techniques

Tradecraft, within the intelligence community, refers to the techniques, methods, and technologies used in modern espionage (spying) and generally as part of the activity of intelligence assessment. This includes general topics or techniques, or the specific techniques of a nation or organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Bentley</span> Cold War Soviet spy

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.

Bela Gold, also Bill Gold, (1915–2012), was a Hungarian-born American businessman and professor.

The Huston Plan was a 43-page report and outline of proposed security operations put together by White House aide Tom Charles Huston in 1970. It came to light during the 1973 Watergate hearings headed by Senator Sam Ervin (D-NC). According to U.S. Senator Charles Mathias (R-MD), U.S. President Richard Nixon rescinded the plan on July 28, 1970, after approving it on July 23. Mathias commented that "Many constitutional lawyers believe that for five days in 1970 the fundamental guarantees of the Bill of Rights were suspended by the mandate given the secret 'Huston plan'," and that during the five days the plan was approved, "authoritarian rule had superseded the constitution." Specifically, the authorization was to suspend the protections from the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution against unreasonable searches and seizures.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">British Security Co-ordination</span> British intelligence agency

British Security Co-ordination (BSC) was a covert organisation set up in New York City by the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) in May 1940 upon the authorisation of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill.

Anatoly Veniaminovich Gorsky, was a Soviet spy who, under cover as First Secretary "Anatoly Borisovich Gromov" of the Soviet Embassy in Washington, was secretly rezident in the United States at the end of World War II.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">FBI Index</span> System used to track American citizens and other people

The FBI Indexes, or Index List, was a system used to track American citizens and other people by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) before the adoption of computerized databases. The Index List was originally made of paper index cards, first compiled by J. Edgar Hoover at the Bureau of Investigations before he was appointed director of the FBI. The Index List was used to track U.S. citizens and others believed by the FBI to be dangerous to national security, and was subdivided into various divisions which generally were rated based on different classes of danger the subject was thought to represent.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mass surveillance in the United States</span>

The practice of mass surveillance in the United States dates back to wartime monitoring and censorship of international communications from, to, or which passed through the United States. After the First and Second World Wars, mass surveillance continued throughout the Cold War period, via programs such as the Black Chamber and Project SHAMROCK. The formation and growth of federal law-enforcement and intelligence agencies such as the FBI, CIA, and NSA institutionalized surveillance used to also silence political dissent, as evidenced by COINTELPRO projects which targeted various organizations and individuals. During the Civil Rights Movement era, many individuals put under surveillance orders were first labelled as integrationists, then deemed subversive, and sometimes suspected to be supportive of the communist model of the United States' rival at the time, the Soviet Union. Other targeted individuals and groups included Native American activists, African American and Chicano liberation movement activists, and anti-war protesters.

Frank Edward Terpil was a CIA agent born in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. in 1939, who was asked to leave the agency for misconduct in 1971. He then "went rogue", going to work for Edwin P. Wilson's operations supplying arms, bomb making training, and surveillance equipment to numerous regimes.

The DETCOM Program, along with the COMSAB Program formed part of the "Emergency Detention Program" (1946–1950) of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). As FBI historian Athan Theoharis described in 1978, "The FBI compiled other lists in addition to the Security Index. These include a "Comsab program", and "Detcom program", and a Communist Index

Defending Rights & Dissent (DRAD) is a national not-for-profit advocacy organization in the United States, dedicated to defending civil liberties, exposing government repression, and protecting the right of political dissent. DRAD was formed as the merger of the Defending Dissent Foundation (DDF) and the Bill of Rights Defense Committee (BORDC). DRAD is currently active in defending the right to protest, opposing political surveillance, and campaigning against the prosecution of national security whistleblowers.

References

General references

Inline citations

  1. ↑ "Tallinn government surveillance cameras reveal black bag operation". Intelnews. 16 December 2008. Archived from the original on 1 April 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  2. ↑ "Freedom of Information/Privacy Act". Federal Bureau of Investigation. Archived from the original on 12 September 2022. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  3. ↑ Select 1976, p. 9.
  4. ↑ Select 1976, p. 1.
  5. ↑ Select 1976, p. 4.
  6. ↑ Robinson, Timothy S. (13 July 1978). "Testimony Cites Hoover Approval of Black-Bag Jobs". The Washington Post . ISSN   0190-8286 . Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  7. ↑ Kiernan, Laura A. (16 October 1980). "FBI 'Bag Jobs' Allowable, Court Told". The Washington Post. ISSN   0190-8286. Archived from the original on 24 January 2020. Retrieved 12 September 2022.
  8. ↑ Rood, Justin (15 June 2007). "FBI to Boost 'Black Bag' Search Ops". ABC News . Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  9. ↑ Kessler, Lauren (13 October 2009). Clever Girl: Elizabeth Bentley, the Spy Who Ushered in the McCarthy Era. HarperCollins. p. 130. ISBN   9780061740473 . Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  10. ↑ Olmsted, Kathryn J. (3 November 2003). Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley. University of North Carolina Press. pp. 26–27. ISBN   9780807862179 . Retrieved 4 September 2017.
  11. ↑ "The CIA Code Thief Who Came in from the Cold". matthewaid.com. Archived from the original on 27 April 2013. Retrieved 3 December 2012.

Bibliography

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.