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Family Jewels (Central Intelligence Agency)

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The family jewels is the informal name used to refer to a set of reports that detail the illegal activities conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency of the United States in a roughly quarter-century period in the 1950s and 1970s.[1] William Colby, who was the CIA director in the mid-1970s and helped in the compilation of the reports, dubbed them the "skeletons" in the CIA's closet.[1] Most of the documents were publically released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy.[2]. The National Security Archive NGO had filed a FOIA request fifteen years earlier [3].

Background

The reports that constitute the CIA's "family jewels" were commissioned in 1973, by the then CIA director James R. Schlesinger in response to press accounts of CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal, in particular support to the burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, both CIA veterans.[1] On May 9, 1974 he signed a directive commanding senior officers to compile a report of current or past CIA actions that may have fallen outside the agency's charter. The resultant report which was in the form of 693 loose-leaf book of memos passed onto William Colby when he succeeded Schlesinger as the Director of Central Intelligence in late 1973.

Leaks and official release

Journalist Seymour Hersh revealed some of the contents of the "family jewels" in a New York Times article in 1974 in which he reported:

The Central Intelligence Agency, directly violating its charter, conducted a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation during the Nixon Administration against the antiwar movement and other dissident groups in the United States according to well-placed Government sources.[4]

Other details of the contents trickled out over the years but requests by journalist and historians for access to the documents under the Freedom of Information Act were long denied, till CIA Director Michael V. Hayden announced in June 2007 that the documents will be finally released to the public.[1] A six-page summary of the reports were made available at the National Security Archives at George Washington University with the following introduction:

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.[5]

The complete set of documents, with some redactions, including multiple pages in their entirety, were released on the CIA website on June 25, 2007.[6]

Content

The reports describe several activities conducted by the CIA in the 1950s-70s that violated its charter. According to a briefing provided by CIA Director William Colby to the Justice Department on December 31 1974, these included 18 issues which were of legal concern:[7]

  1. Confinement of a Russian defector, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, that "might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws."
  2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, approved by US Attorney General Robert Kennedy and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara (see also Project Mockingbird) [8].
  3. Physical surveillance of investigative journalist and muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including Les Whitten of the Washington Post and future Fox News Channel managing editor and anchor Brit Hume. Jack Anderson had written two articles on assassination attempts on Castro.
  4. Physical surveillance of then-Washington Post reporter Michael Getler, who later was an ombudsman for the Washington Post and PBS.
  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. Opening of mail from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union (including letters associated with actress Jane Fonda) (project SRPOINTER/HTLINGUAL at JFK airport)
  9. Opening of mail from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from PR China (project SRPOINTER/HTLINGUAL at JFK airport - see also Project SHAMROCK by the NSA).
  10. Funding of behavior modification research and experiments on "unwitting" U.S. citizens (see also Project MKULTRA concerning LSD experiments - [9] )
  11. Assassination plots against Cuban president Fidel Castro authorized by Robert Kennedy [10], Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, president Rafael Leónidas Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army in 1970 René Schneider [11].
  12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971 (see Project RESISTANCE, Project MERRIMAC and Operation CHAOS)
  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 (In August 1978, Marchetti published an article about the assassination of John F. Kennedy in the Liberty Lobby newspaper, The Spotlight. In the article Marchetti argued that the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had obtained a 1966 CIA memo that revealed E. Howard Hunt, Frank Sturgis — both involved in the Watergate —, and Gerry Patrick Hemming had been involved in the plot to kill Kennedy.)
  15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement (see Project RESISTANCE, Project MERRIMAC and Operation CHAOS).
  16. Polygraph experiments with the sheriff of San Mateo, California.
  17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws.
  18. Testing of electronic equipment on U.S. telephone circuits.

The documents include Watergate-related items (p. 350-351) as well as documents on training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. (one quotes Dan Mitrione [12], the FBI agent and torture expert who coordinated police forces in South America). It also highlights equipment support to local police, which could have been considered illegal under the National Security Act of 1947 (page 6).

References

  1. ^ a b c d DeYoung, Karen (2007-06-22). "CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry". Washington Post. Retrieved 2007-06-22. {{cite news}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
  2. ^ "C.I.A. Releases Files on Misdeeds From the Past". New York Times. 2007-06-26. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  3. ^ The CIA's Family Jewels, National Security Archive
  4. ^ Hersh, Seymour (1974-12-22). "Huge C.I.A. operation reported in U.S. against antiwar forces, other dissidents in Nixon years". New York Times. p. 1. {{cite news}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  5. ^ http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm
  6. ^ ""Family Jewels"". Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2007-06-26.. ""Family Jewels (PDF version)"" (PDF). Central Intelligence Agency. Retrieved 2007-06-26.
  7. ^ James A. Wilderotter (1975-01-03). "Memorandum: CIA matters" (PDF). National Security Archive. Retrieved 2007-06-22.
  8. ^ Memorandum for the File, "CIA Matters," by James A. Wilderotter, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 3 January 1975, National Security Archive
  9. ^ 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) - documents relating to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb
  10. ^ January 4, 1975 memorandum of conversation between President Gerald Ford and Henry Kissinger, made available by the National Security Archive, June 2007
  11. ^ Memo of conversation, January 3, 1975, between President Gerald Ford, William Colby, etc., made available by the National Security Archive
  12. ^ 10) CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. (pp. 599-603), National Security Archive

See also

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