CIA agents saw HK as window on Communist Party
CIA agents worked to infiltrate groups in Hong Kong with connections to the Communist Party, documents released in the US yesterday reveal.
Under the Chaos Programme, agents from the Central Intelligence Agency, FBI and civilians with 'extremist credentials' were cultivated and despatched to gather intelligence from overseas communist groups. China, Cuba, North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, North Korea and Arab nations under the Fedayeen were targeted by the programme.
The aim was to collect information to link foreign communist powers to US activists and civilians.
Hong Kong is named in the document as an area of 'important operational interest' along with Paris, Stockholm, Algiers, Dar es Salaam and Mexico.
The document dubbed 'The Family Jewels' also mentions the CIA's East Asia division, which was responsible for the 'placing of agents in leftist milieu', suggesting they recruited locals to act as spies.
The CIA describes the Chaos Programme's purpose as being to gather information about extremist groups working in the US at a time when Washington believed many activists were being influenced by outside powers.
Rather than recruiting new members, the document said efforts were made to use existing contacts. The report said the programme had played an 'integral part of collection programmes in China operations'.
The report on the programme is dated May 1973. Audio surveillance was also conducted on some groups.
The information was considered highly sensitive. Once collected, it bypassed normal channels and was processed by the Special Operations Group. 'Information of particular significance, when collected, has been disseminated by special memorandum over the signature of the Director of Central Intelligence to the White House (John Dean and Dr Kissinger) as well as Attorney General, Secretary of State and Director of the FBI,' the memorandum said.
Former deputy to the National People's Congress Choi Wai-hang said he was not surprised by the revelations. Most people would have assumed US spies were active in Hong Kong in the 1960s and 1970s, he said.
'This [spying] was quite common at the time. They were trying to get information from everywhere,' said Mr Choi, who was detained for 18 months at Mount Davies camp in Western during the 1967 riots.
The Family Jewels also provides new details about how the CIA illegally spied on US citizens and tracked down an expert lock picker for a Watergate conspirator. It also detailed CIA collaboration with the Mafia for a failed assassination attempt on Cuban President Fidel Castro.
Eye on China
The CIA targeted HK people with connections to Communist Party
Document dubbed The Family Jewels has this number of pages: 702
