The Secrets of the Santa Claus Papers; The legendary St. Nicholas has been the subject of top-secret documents, lawsuits, scientific curiosity and trademark battles

0 Comments | Insight on the News, Dec 22, 2003

Byline: Timothy W. Maier, INSIGHT

For 30 years the federal government kept under wraps one of its most successful foilings of a terrorist plot. Then last summer President George W. Bush quietly released the long-secret 1974 White House "Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism." Better known among insiders as the "Santa Claus Papers," these classified documents originally were hand-delivered to then-president Gerald R. Ford. One might have expected that Time magazine, Newsweek or even the New York Times would have jumped on this story. But no, nothing was stirring. Not even a mouse. They simply missed it as it flew, like the down of a thistle, under the media radar screen into oblivion.

Today the once highly secretive Santa Claus Papers are buried in the National Security Archives at George Washington University. The document dated Dec. 17, 1974, comes with this official label - "Warning-Notice: Sensitive Intelligence Sources and Methods Involved." It formally notes the report "is not for general distribution and may not be reproduced or included in other publications nor cited as a source of information." It was prepared for the Cabinet Committee to Combat Terrorism (CCCT) and its working group, composed of representatives from the departments of State, Defense, Justice, Transportation and Treasury, the Domestic Council staff, the FBI, the National Security Council, the Office of Management and Budget, the United States Mission to the United Nations ... and the CIA. The Nixon administration had established the CCCT in the aftermath of the Black September attacks on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and an unrelated but alarming rise in Florida aircraft hijackings.

The eight-page document, stamped "Secret," discusses terrorist threats and plans in the Western Hemisphere, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and the Far East. It contains references to British Airways hijackers and seven other terrorists apparently living in Libya, as well as relocation of terrorist leader Sabri al-Banna from Iraq to Libya. The documents also reveal details of a private plane hijacked from Florida to Cuba and a possible package bomb intercepted at the British Consulate in Buenos Aires.

This report initially was declassified in 1999, but the Clinton administration redacted the section concerning the Santa Claus Papers. President Bush reversed that Clinton decision last year, releasing the highly secretive intelligence in a crafty document dump that avoided public notice until the papers were obtained by Insight.

Here then is what the government knew all along. Indeed, nestled within these secret pages of worldwide terrorist plans and threats for 1974 was this Santa bombshell: "A new organization of uncertain makeup, using the name 'Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge' plans to sabotage the annual courier flight of the Government of the North Pole. Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus has been notified and security precautions are being coordinated worldwide by the CCCT Working Group."

Of course this was a jolly holiday joke - we think - but apparently the U.S. government didn't want anyone to learn that, even at the height of the Cold War, intelligence agencies had a sense of humor. Tom Blanton, director of the National Security Archives, sees the Santa Claus Papers as but one symptom of the epidemic problem of overclassification whereby the government keeps "dubious secrets" for no apparent reason. When Insight asks why the Santa Papers were kept secret for so long, CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield explains bluntly, "We blew it. It's as simple as that."

Encouraged to clarify why the first CIA reviewer redacted the Santa Papers and the second CIA reviewer released the secret, Mansfield paused briefly and then blurted, "The second person who reviewed it for declassification didn't realize that S. Claus was a source of ours so he left it in. We are going to find out who reviewed the S. Claus declassification and put a lump of coal in their Christmas stocking."

The North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) spokesman, Canadian army Maj. Douglas Martin, says he neither can confirm nor deny the foiling of the 1974 terrorist plot, but insists Santa is facing no known terrorist plots this year. "Besides," he says of the magical old elf, "Santa doesn't need our help."

Meanwhile, as Christmas neared, this magazine's investigative reporters have learned that declassification of the Santa Papers is not the first time a government has wrestled with issues involving the red-suited saint and his reindeer. Since emergence into America in the late 17th century, Santa has been the target of grave robbers, lawsuits, scientific curiosity and trademark issues.

For starters, there is the insistence of some grown-ups that Santa is dead. The Turkish Santa Claus Foundation continues to demand that Italy return the bones of St. Nicholas, who reportedly died on Dec. 6, 345, and was buried in a small church at Myra, an ancient city along the Mediterranean coast of what is now the Republic of Turkey. Turkish officials insist the bones of the Christmas icon were stolen by pirates in the 11th century and taken to the Italian town of Bari.