CIA kept threat to Santa a secret

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US Central Intelligence Agency classified as "secret" and withheld from public dissemination for nearly 29 years a prank terrorist threat against Santa Claus, according to documents released on Wednesday.

The threat — purported to come from a then- and still-unknown group calling itself the "Group of the Martyr Ebenezer Scrooge" — was contained in a classified compilation of intelligence on possible terrorist attacks produced by the CIA in late 1974, according to the documents.

"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," the CIA said in its Dec. 17, 1974 "Weekly Situation Report on International Terrorism."

"Prime Minister and Chief Courier S. Claus has been notified and security precautions are being coordinated worldwide by the CCCT working group," it said, identifying the night of Dec. 24-25, 1974 as the date for the planned "sabotage."

It was not clear whether the CIA had learned of a prank threat to Santa, or if the analysts compiling the report had inserted it as a holiday joke.

Along with the threat to Santa, the situation report included deadly serious incidents and warnings including intelligence detailing potential terrorist attacks in the Middle East, possible bombs at the British embassy in Buenos Aires and a plane hijacking.

Despite the dubious nature of the threat to Father Christmas, the CIA blacked out all references to it when the situation report was declassified in 1999, according to the documents.

The documents, which include the original report as well as the redacted version released to the public in 1999, were released by the National Security Archive as part of its campaign against the "overclassification" of government files.

"The CIA’s secret Santa leads the archive’s lengthy compilation of declassified documents that illustrate the arbitrary and capricious decision making that all too often characterizes the US government’s national security secrecy system," it said in a statement.

The National Security Archive, part of the George Washington University in the US capital, is a private research group that seeks the declassification of government documents through the Freedom of Information Act for historical purposes.