Washington, D.C – For years, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) denied having a secret file on Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Noam Chomsky. However, a new government disclosure obtained by The Cable revealed that the agency did in fact gather records on the anti-war iconoclast during his heyday in the 1970s.
The disclosure also revealed that CIA scrubbed all Chomsky’s file from Langley’s archives. It then raised questions as to when the file was destroyed and under what authority.
The breakthrough in the search for Chomsky’s CIA file comes with Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). For years, FOIA’s requests to the CIA ended up with the same denial: “We did not locate any records responsive to your request.”
The denials were never entirely credible, given that Chomsky was a anti-war activist in the 60s and 70s and that CIA had a well-documented track record of domestic espionage in the Vietnam era.
Now, a public record requested by Chomsky’s biographer Fredric Maxwell revealed a memo between the CIA and the FBI that confirms the existence of a CIA file on Chomsky.
The memo, dated June 8, 1970, discussed Chomsky’s anti-war activities and asked the FBI for more information about the anti-war activists trip to North Vietnam. The memo’s author, a CIA official, said that the trip had the “ENDORSEMENT OF NOAM CHOMSKY” and requested “ANY INFORMATION” about the people associated with the trip.
Foreign Policy | Abdul Manan