Dissident

CIA Kept File on Chomsky

Denied it for years.

It turns out the CIA was keeping tabs on MIT professor Noam Chomsky, after all. The CIA denied this was the case for years, but a document obtained by Foreign Policy from a Freedom of Information Act request to the FBI reveals that the FBI and the CIA were discussing a trip by antiwar activists to North Vietnam that Chomsky had endorsed. According to an expert on FBI-CIA cooperation interviewed by Foreign Policy, the memo suggests that the CIA destroyed its Chomsky file, hence the repeated denials that any file exists. Chomsky, of course, was not surprised when told he’d been watched. “Some day it will be realized that systems of power typically try to extend their power in any way they can think of,” he said.