Operation MH/CHAOS was the code name for a secret domestic spying program conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency in the late 1960s and early 1970s, after being charged with unmasking possible foreign influences on the student antiwar movement. CIA counterinsurgency officer Frank Rafalko was a member of the CHAOS special operations group. His inside account of the controversial operation provides information never before brought to light. In the book, Rafalko tells how by 1969 the group included sixty officers and their informants who reported on the activities of U.S. citizens abroad and infiltrated foreign antiwar groups that might have ties to U.S. groups. Eventually, he says, the program was expanded to include domestic leftists or counter-cultural groups with no discernible connection to the antiwar movement, including women's liberation groups, Students for a Democratic Society, and the Black Panther Party. The group disbanded following the Watergate scandal that involved two former CIA officers.

MH/CHAOS was exposed by the New York Times in 1974 and further details were revealed during Congressional hearings that prompted the government to launch investigations into CIA surveillance activities within the United States. Rafalko refutes the charges made by the Times and takes issue with the government findings. He makes the case that their activities were justified and that the CIA was the logical agency to collect information. The author argues his point by providing details secretly collected by his group against the New Left and black extremists. The book describes how MH/CHAOS began, how it was staffed, and how it was transformed into an anti-terrorist unit before it ceased operation. The first book to reveal such details, it also calls attention to the consequences suffered by the American counterintelligence community because of the government investigations.

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