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In
the news
"Files
on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War"
By Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner
New York Times
June 27, 2007
"CIA
Releases Files on Past Misdeeds"
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus"
Washington Post
June 27, 2007
"CIA
discloses past abuses"
By Richard Willing
USA Today
June 27, 2007
"CIA
Releases 700 Pages of 'Family Jewels'"
All Things Considered (National Public Radio)
June 26, 2007
"CIA
to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry"
By Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus
Washington Post
June 22, 2007
"CIA
Kidnapping, Wiretapping of '60s, '70s Revealed"
Morning Edition (National Public Radio)
June 22, 2007
"C.I.A.
to Release Documents on Decades-Old Misdeeds"
By Scott Shane
New York Times
June 22, 2007
Chronology
of the CIA's record on declassification
CIA
Proposed Rule on FOIA Fees Would Burden Requesters and the Agency
February
7, 2007
CIA
Had Single Officer in Hungary 1956
October
31, 2006
CIA
Claims the Right to Decide What is News
June 14, 2006
Secret
Understanding Between National Archives and CIA Exposes Framework
for Surreptitious Reclassification Program
April 19, 2006
CIA
Wins 2006 "Rosemary Award" for Worst Freedom of Information
Performance by a Federal Agency
March 13, 2006
Declassification
in Reverse
February 21, 2006
PDB
News - The President's Daily Brief
January 27, 2006
Judge
Refuses In Camera Review of CIA Estimate on Iraq
October
21, 2005
Public
Interest in Hidden CIA Operational Records Is High
January
21, 2005
Professor
Sues CIA for President's Daily Briefs
December 23, 2004
Archive
Calls on CIA and Congress to Address Loophole Shielding CIA Records
From the Freedom of Information Act
October
15, 2004
CIA
Whites Out Controversial Estimate on Iraq Weapons
July
9, 2004
Dubious
Secrets
May
21, 2003
The
Secret CIA History of the Iran Coup
November
29, 2000
Lawsuit
calls CIA secrecy claims "facially incredible"
August 2, 2000
Archive
Sues CIA
May 13, 1999
CIA's
Broken Promises on Declassification
What
Others Say about CIA's Promises
"C.I.A.,
Breaking Promises, Puts Off Release of Cold War Files"
By Tim Weiner
New York Times (Select)
July 15, 1998
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Update
- June 26, 2007, 1 p.m. - The
full "family
jewels" report, released today by the
Central Intelligence Agency and detailing 25 years of Agency
misdeeds, is now available on the Archive's Web site. The 702-page
collection was delivered by CIA officers to the Archive at approximately
11:30 this morning -- 15 years after the Archive filed a Freedom
of Information request for the documents.
The report is available for download in its entirety and is
also split into five smaller files for easier download.
ALL
FILES NOW FULL TEXT SEARCHABLE!
CIA's
"Family Jewels" - full report (24 MB)
CIA's
"Family Jewels" - Part
1 | Part
2 | Part
3 | Part
4 | Part
5
Top
Ten Most Interesting "Family Jewels"
Released by the CIA to the National Security Archive, June
26, 2007
1)
Journalist surveillance - operation CELOTEX I-II (pp.
26-30)
2)
Covert mail opening, codenamed SRPOINTER / HTLINGUAL at JFK
airport (pp. 28, 644-45)
3)
Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt
requests a lock picker (p.
107)
4)
CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett
"thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is
acquainted with this program" (Sidney Gottlieb's drug
experiments) (p. 213)
5)
MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic
U.S. dissent) reflecting Agency employee resentment against
participation (p. 326)
6)
Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba (p.
464)
7)
Report of detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko (p.
522)
8)
Document describing John Lennon funding anti-war activists
(p. 552)
9) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic
U.S. dissent) (pp. 591-93)
10)
CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue
of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc.
(pp. 599-603)
Plus
a bonus "Jewel":
Warrantless wiretapping by CIA's Division D (pp.
533-539)
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Today's release also includes a substantially-excised version
of a memo first released
30 years ago in 1977 with fewer excisions (see comparison
below).
Update
- June 26, 2007, 11:00 a.m. - The
Central Intelligence Agency has promised to deliver the long-secret
"family jewels" report to the Archive within the hour.
The complete report, as released by CIA, will be posted here as
soon as we can scan it.
In the meantime, the Archive has posted the
original
memorandum, signed by then-CIA director James R.
Schlesinger, ordering the "family jewels" study and
calling on CIA employees to report to him any activities "which
might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of
this Agency."
Washington
D.C., June 21,
2007 - The Central Intelligence
Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of
illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots,
and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms
in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today
on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington
University.
CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency
is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal
activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in
1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen
heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified,
although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been
filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called the
file "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different
Agency." The papers are scheduled for public release on
Monday, June 25.
"This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial
material since George
Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness
at the Agency," commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive's
director.
Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages
of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses
of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet
relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw
Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy
plane.
The National Security Archive separately obtained (and posted
today) a six-page
summary of the illegal CIA activities, prepared
by Justice Department lawyers after a CIA briefing in December
1974, and the memorandum
of conversation when the CIA first briefed President
Gerald Ford on the scandal on January 3, 1975.
Then-CIA director Schlesinger commissioned the "family
jewels" compilation with a May 9, 1973 directive after
finding out that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James
McCord (both veteran CIA officers) had cooperation from the
Agency as they carried out "dirty tricks" for President
Nixon. The Schlesinger directive, drafted by deputy director
for operations William Colby, commanded senior CIA officials
to report immediately on any current or past Agency matters
that might fall outside CIA authority. By the end of May, Colby
had been named to succeed Schlesinger as DCI, and his loose-leaf
notebook of memos totaled 693 pages [see John
Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William
Colby (Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 259-260.]
Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA's illegal domestic operations
with a front page story in the New York Times on December
22, 1974 ("Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against
Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years"), writing
that "a check of the CIA's domestic files ordered last
year… produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities…
beginning in the nineteen fifties, including break-ins, wiretapping,
and the surreptitious inspection of mail."
On December 31, 1974, CIA director Colby and the CIA general
counsel John Warner met
with the deputy attorney general, Laurence Silberman,
and his associate, James Wilderotter, to brief Justice "in
connection with the recent New York Times articles"
on CIA matters that "presented legal questions." Colby's
list included 18 specifics:
1. Confinement of a Russian defector that "might be regarded
as a violation of the kidnapping laws."
2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and
Paul Scott.
3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his
associates, including current Fox News anchor Brit Hume.
4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael
Getler.
5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee.
6. Break-in at the office of a former defector.
7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee.
8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the
Soviet Union.
9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China.
10. Behavior modification experiments on "unwitting"
U.S. citizens.
11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo
(on the latter, "no active part" but a "faint
connection" to the killers).
12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971.
13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S.
citizens in Detroit.
14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor
Marchetti.
15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the
antiwar movement.
16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff.
17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state
laws.
18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.
Read
the Documents
Note:
The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe
Acrobat Reader to view.
Document
1: Summary of the Family Jewels
Memorandum for the File, "CIA Matters," by
James A. Wilderotter, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 3 January
1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential
Library
On New Years' eve, 1974, DCI Colby met with Justice Department
officials, including Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman,
to give them a full briefing of the "skeletons."
Document
2: Colby Briefs President Ford on the Family Jewels
Memorandum of Conversation, 3 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library
Ten days after the appearance of Hersh's New York Times
story, DCI William Colby tells President Ford how his predecessor
James Schlesinger (then serving as Secretary of Defense) ordered
CIA staffers to compile the "skeletons" in the Agency's
closet, such as surveillance of student radicals, illegal wiretaps,
assassination plots, and the three year confinement of a Soviet
defector, Yuri Nosenko.
Document
3: Kissinger's Reaction
Memorandum of Conversation between President Ford and
Secretary of State/National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger,
4 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library
An apoplectic Kissinger argues that the unspilling of CIA secrets
is "worse than the days of McCarthyism" when the Wisconsin
Senator went after the State Department. Kissinger had met with
former DCI Richard Helms who told him that "these stories
are just the tip of the iceberg," citing as one example
Robert F. Kennedy's role in assassination planning. Ford wondered
whether to fire Colby, but Kissinger advised him to wait until
after the investigations were complete when he could "put
in someone of towering integrity." The "Blue Ribbon"
announcement refers to the creation of a commission chaired
by then-vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Document
4: Investigations Continue
Memorandum of Conversation between Kissinger, Schlesinger,
Colby et al., "Investigations of Allegations of CIA Domestic
Activities," 20 February 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Cabinet and sub-cabinet level officials led by Kissinger discuss
ways and means to protect information sought by ongoing Senate
(Church Committee) and House (Pike Committee) investigations
of intelligence community abuses during the first decades of
the Cold War. Worried about the foreign governments that have
cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies, Kissinger wants
to "demonstrate to foreign countries that we aren't too
dangerous to cooperate with because of leaks."
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