Scope and Content Note
The records of the Commission on CIA Activities within the United States span the years 1941-1975, with the bulk of the material concentrated in the period 1956-1975. The ad hoc commission, created by President Gerald R. Ford via Executive Order 11828 on 4 January 1975, and known as the Rockefeller Commission after its chair, Vice President Nelson A. Rockefeller, was charged with determining whether the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) conducted domestic surveillance and other activities. Its final report on 6 June 1975 found that the CIA had conducted unlawful acts within the United States that included infiltrating dissident groups, opening private mail, testing behavior-inducing drugs on unknowing citizens, and subjecting foreign defectors to physical abuse and prolonged confinement.
The records of the commission in the Library of Congress, a culled version of originals in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library, were created by Rockefeller as a set of proceedings and reference materials. As such they do not contain files regarding the administration or day-to-day functions of the commission. They include testimonies and staff interviews with witnesses regarding the full range of subjects covered by the commission's final report, as well as many of the CIA's most sensitive internal documents, or "family jewels." In addition, the records include files regarding the assassinations of foreign leaders, a topic studied by the commission but not included in its final report. The collection is organized into two series, a Reference File containing the original source material and background information used in authoring the commission's final report, and a Transcripts of Testimonies File containing depositions of major witnesses appearing before the commission.
Responsibilities for researching and compiling the various portions of the final report were assigned to teams of lawyers, each of which maintained its files separately. These basic file groups have been preserved and consist of subseries within the Reference File. The table of contents of the Final Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (Washington, D.C.: Superintendent of Documents, 1975) may be useful when used in conjunction with the team files. A copy of the table of contents has been reproduced as an Appendix to the finding aid available in the Manuscript Division Reading Room.
Almost three-thousand pages of testimony were taken from fifty-one witnesses, and transcripts of many of them make up the Transcripts of Testimonies File. These testimonies, provided under oath as depositions before the sitting commission, differ from less formal interviews conducted with various parties by individual staff members, filed in the Reference File.
File numbers assigned to each folder by the commission have been retained and listed in the container list. These numbers match those on the original files in the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library in Ann Arbor, Michigan. All files are reproductions of originals in the Ford Library save those in the G-M-G File of the Reference File, for which there are no originals.
Six sets of these records were produced, of which this set, the Ford Library set, and a set in the custody of the Rockefeller University Archive Center at Pocantico Hills in North Tarrytown, N.Y. are the only ones known to be extant. The original "family jewels" files remain in the custody of the CIA.