The_Info_Web/10 - PEOPLE/(N-S)/Richard Ober.md

category	tags	aliases	created	updated	summary	born	died	location	relations
Intelligence & Government	Person CIA OperationCHAOS Counterintelligence ChurchCommittee RockefellerCommission Nixon Watergate ColdWar	Dick Ober Richard Ober	2026-05-15	2026-10-09	CIA counterintelligence officer who headed the Special Operations Group that ran Operation CHAOS from August 1967, later Director for Intelligence Coordination at the National Security Council (1974 to 1976).	1921	2001	Fairfax Station, Virginia	type with start end role fn employed_by Central Intelligence Agency 1948 1980 career officer; Special Operations Group, Counterintelligence Staff, 1967 to 1972 1 type with start end role fn head_of Operation CHAOS 1967-08 1972 chief of the Special Operations Group, Counterintelligence Staff 2 type with start end role fn reported_to James Jesus Angleton 1967-08 1972 Chief of Counterintelligence, described by the Church Committee as Ober's immediate superior 2 type with start end role fn employed_by National Security Council 1974 1976 Director for Intelligence Coordination 1 type with start end role fn participant_in Church Committee 1975-10-28 1975-10-30 testified October 28 and 30, 1975 2 type with start role fn participant_in Rockefeller Commission 1975 1975-03-28 testified March 28, 1975 2

Richard Ober (born 1921, New York City; died 2001, Fairfax Station, Virginia) was a career Central Intelligence Agency counterintelligence officer. He headed the Special Operations Group of the Agency's Counterintelligence Staff from August 1967, the unit that ran Operation CHAOS, the program that assembled files on American antiwar, student and Black militant groups. His papers are at the Hoover Institution. A 1979 book by Deborah Davis named him as Deep Throat.¹

Education and CIA career

Ober received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1943 and served in the United States Army from 1943 to 1946. He joined the CIA in 1948, took an M.A. at Columbia University, and graduated from the National War College in 1964 (his papers include a war college file on a student group trip to Africa).¹

The Hoover Institution finding aid lists three assignments after 1967: chief of the CIA Counterintelligence Special Operations Group, 1967 to 1972; chief of the Counterintelligence International Terrorism Group, 1972 to 1974; and Director for Intelligence Coordination, National Security Council, 1974 to 1976. He retired from the CIA in 1980.¹

Special Operations Group, 1967 to 1972

By early 1967 Ober was investigating possible links between foreign intelligence services and persons connected with Ramparts magazine, which had that year published an account of CIA relationships with private institutions. He had begun a computerized file on dissident activists connected to the magazine; by August 1967 he estimated he had indexed several hundred Americans and opened perhaps fifty files.²

On August 15, 1967, Thomas Karamessines, Deputy Director for Plans, sent James Jesus Angleton a memorandum titled "Overseas Coverage of Subversive Student and Related Matters." It asked for the "establishment of some sort of system by Dick Ober (or whatever officer you select)." The Church Committee wrote that Angleton chose Ober to head what became the Special Operations Group within the Counterintelligence Staff. It described Angleton as Ober's immediate superior.²

The Committee recorded Ober's testimony that his operation soon came to include antiwar activists as well as student radicals and Black nationalists, and that his participation in the CIA's October 1967 study for the President on the "International Connections of the United States Peace Movement" made Vietnam protest a major target. He coordinated the Plans Directorate contribution and the receipt of material from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He also supplied the Kerner Commission with 26 reports at the request of Richard Helms, and prepared 34 "M" memoranda, reports on particularly sensitive items for the White House, the Attorney General, the Secretary of State and similar officials.²

The Rockefeller Commission 1975 (which referred to him as the Chief of the Operation) found that the group was physically removed from the Counterintelligence Staff and that Angleton, though technically responsible in the chain of command, had little connection with CHAOS operations. It cited a May 1969 CIA memorandum recording that Helms instructed the chief of the operation to refrain from disclosing part of his activities to the Counterintelligence Chief. The Commission also reported that both men considered actual supervisory responsibility to rest with the Director of Central Intelligence.³ A memorandum by Ober dated May 29, 1969 set the restricted handling of MHCHAOS cable traffic and provided that none of it would be destroyed by divisions or sent to RID.⁴

Ober refused in early 1971 to approve a directive that would have given the Domestic Contact Service a secondary interest in domestic background, and its reporting to CHAOS was narrowed to information suggesting foreign involvement in American radical activities. A September 10, 1971 cable over his name told a station that named subjects "are not aware MHCHAOS and this subject should not be discussed with them."²⁵ His deputy testified to the Church Committee on October 14, 1975 under the alias "James Eatinger."²

Ober testified that Helms never pressured him as to the findings reported by the CIA. Helms testified that the White House was dissatisfied with the reports because they did not show "enough foreign money and foreign influence in these dissident movements."²

Terrorism group and the end of CHAOS

The Church Committee wrote that Ober had taken on the duties of coordinating the CIA's efforts against international terrorism in the summer of 1972, and that in 1973 CHAOS was transferred from the Counterintelligence Staff to a newly formed Operations Staff in the Plans Directorate. William Colby terminated CHAOS as a collection program in March 1974 (the Rockefeller Commission gave the date as March 15, 1974).²³

Deborah Davis and Deep Throat, 1979 to 1983

In Katharine the Great (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), Deborah Davis wrote that Ober was "Angleton's deputy" and "one of the few" men in the CIA whom Richard Nixon trusted; that Ober "was given a small office inside the White House, where he was known only to Nixon, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and possibly Henry Kissinger"; and that his name was never recorded in White House logs. The passage is quoted in a biographical note on Ober published by the Spartacus Educational website.⁶

Davis also wrote that Ober was Deep Throat, the Washington Post source of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein on Watergate. According to a 1983 account by Eve Pell in The Nation (clipped in CIA files), a lawyer for Ober wrote on the November 6, 1979 publication day that references to his client were "defamatory and libelous," called Davis's theory that Ober was involved in Watergate dirty tricks a "complete fabrication," and branded as false her assertion that he had been involved with the "Plumbers" group headed by E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy or had helped plan the break-in at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Davis agreed to delete the allegations about Watergate involvement; because the lawyer did not deny her claim that Ober was Deep Throat, she let that stand. Ben Bradlee separately wrote to her editor that she had made thirty-nine errors on thirty-nine pages where his name appeared. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich withdrew as publisher in early 1980, and in October 1983 paid Davis $100,000 to settle her breach-of-contract suit.⁷ The Hoover finding aid describes Davis as having "mistakenly named Ober as Deep Throat" and lists a potential legal case in which Ober figured as a potential plaintiff.¹⁷

National Security Council and retirement

After CHAOS was reported by Seymour Hersh in the New York Times on December 22, 1974, Ober was seconded to the National Security Council as its senior staff member for intelligence matters (Director for Intelligence Coordination, 1974 to 1976). The finding aid states that the publicity prompted the Agency to seek severance of his employment, that he resisted, and that he was retired in 1980.¹

Hersh's December 22, 1974 article reported that the unit's liaison with Helms was conducted by Ober, and quoted Ober, reached by telephone, as saying "There's nothing I can say about this."⁸

Testimony, lawsuits and papers

Ober testified to the Rockefeller Commission on March 28, 1975, and to the Church Committee on October 28 and 30, 1975.² The Hoover finding aid lists the Rockefeller Commission, Murphy Commission, Church Committee and Pike Committee files, a Justice Department report file on the mail-opening component, and a legal-cases file concerning civil suits in which Ober was a defendant in all but one. The collection (Richard Ober Papers, 1942 to 2001, acquired by Hoover in 2018) also holds his Army, CIA and National Security Council personnel files.¹

Footnotes

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1. "Ober (Richard) papers, 1942-2001," finding aid (biographical note, scope and contents), Hoover Institution Library & Archives, Online Archive of California, ark:/13030/c81z4b3g, prepared by Dale Reed. https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c81z4b3g ↩︎

2. Church Committee, Final Report, Book III, "CIA Intelligence Collection About Americans: CHAOS and the Office of Security," S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976, pp. 679 to 732 (citing Ober testimony, October 28 and 30, 1975; Ober before the Rockefeller Commission, March 28, 1975; Eatinger testimony, October 14, 1975; Memorandum from Karamessines to Angleton, August 15, 1967). https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/reports/book3/pdf/ChurchB3_9_CHAOS.pdf ↩︎

3. Rockefeller Commission, Report to the President by the Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States (June 1975), Chapter 11, "Special Operations Group, 'Operation CHAOS,'" pp. 130 to 151, discussion of compartmentation and supervision. https://www.aarclibrary.org/publib/church/rockcomm/pdf/RockComm_Chap11_CHAOS.pdf ↩︎

4. Richard Ober, Memorandum for the Record, "Procedures for Restricted Handling of RYBAT MHCHAOS Traffic," May 29, 1969, CIA Reading Room doc. C01475738. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01475738 ↩︎

5. CIA cable from Richard Ober, September 10, 1971, "RYBAT MHCHAOS," CIA Reading Room doc. C01482292. https://archive.org/details/cia-readingroom-document-01482292 ↩︎

6. Deborah Davis, Katharine the Great: Katharine Graham and Her Washington Post Empire (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979), as quoted in "Richard Ober," Spartacus Educational. https://spartacus-educational.com/JFKober.htm ↩︎

7. Eve Pell, "Private Censorship: Killing 'Katharine the Great,'" The Nation, November 12, 1983, as clipped in CIA-RDP90-00845R000201250018-9. https://archive.org/details/CIA-RDP90-00845R000201250018-9 ↩︎

8. Seymour M. Hersh, "Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years," New York Times, December 22, 1974, p. 1 (continued p. 26). ↩︎