Domestic Contact Service

The Domestic Contact Service was one of two overt collection components of the Central Intelligence Group of 1946 and of the Central Intelligence Agency after it. It "solicited domestic sources including travellers and businessmen for foreign intelligence information on a voluntary basis." An agency paper of 1973 described it: "The Domestic Contact Service establishes discreet but overt relationships with American private citizens, commercial, academic and other organizations and resident aliens for the purposes of collecting on a voluntary basis foreign intelligence information or soliciting their cooperation in assisting the Agency to perform its mission overseas. Records of the individuals and organizations cooperating with the Agency are maintained as a necessary practical element of this process."¹²

Transfer to Operations

"Until 1973 the Domestic Contact Service was part of the Directorate of Intelligence. It was placed under the Directorate of Operations to enable the CIA to provide better support for the Foreign Resources Division. Because the Domestic Contact Service has contacts with leaders in all walks of life it possesses a unique capability to open the door for the clandestine services." Renamed the Domestic Collection Division, it "now has many clandestine services officers assigned to it." In 1976 it "maintains contact with tens of thousands of American citizens" and "operates from 38 offices around the United States and lists itself in local telephone directories, although it conducts its business as discretely as possible." The Church Committee recommended that Congress consider returning it to the intelligence directorate and that "DCD's overt contacts be informed when they are to be used for operational support of clandestine activities."¹

Contacts

Clay Shaw of the International Trade Mart reported to the New Orleans office "on 33 separate occasions" between 1948 and 1956, without pay. After his arrest by Jim Garrison in 1967 the office's chief, Lloyd Ray, advised that the general counsel, Lawrence Houston, be told.³

In Dallas the service's officer J. Walton Moore was in contact with George de Mohrenschildt, the friend of Lee Harvey Oswald.⁴

The Miami office made contact with the Wackenhut Corporation on November 27, 1967, seven months after the Office of Security had severed the agency's relations with its founder, and carried it as a contact for reports on Latin America, under Justin Gleichauf as chief of the office through 1970. By 1974 Gleichauf worked for the company and reported to his former office as a private citizen. The case was closed on June 30, 1977.⁵