John McCone, CIA Director in the early1960s, bugged his own offices and home study!

[Up2Late]

This is a new post from David Corn's blog. He has quite a few embedded links in the text there that I'm not going to duplicate, but the link to his blog is below, along with the link to the pdf file of the so-called "Family Jewels." He's a little off on where in the file you find this info though, it starts at the bottom of page 469, item #10 at this link: <http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full_ocr.pdf> Points #11, and #13 are pretty interesting too!

June 27, 2007

More Family Jewels?

I'm surprised. There's a lot of material in the 700-page "Family Jewels" file released by the CIA yesterday (see the post below), but neither of the two major media accounts of this release mention one of the hot items in the file: :hi:that John McCone, a CIA chief in the 1960s, bugged his own offices and home study, that other directors might have done the same, and that the bugged conversations were transcribed. The New York Times account and The Washington Post report say nothing about this nugget contained in a memo written by Walter Elder, who had been McCone's executive assistant. (If you're looking through the "Family Jewels"--which is available here--the Elder memo starts on page 457 of the file.)

Talk about gems! Imagine transcripts of conversations conducted by McCone and other CIA directors. McCone served as CIA director when the CIA (at the urging of Robert Kennedy) was trying to bump off Castro, the United States and the Soviet Union nearly entered a nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the United States was being drawn further into Vietnam. If there are transcripts recording the conversations of other directors, historians and reporters, if they ever could get their hands on these documents, might be able to uncover scandals and revelations that would make Watergate seem small. Tom Blanton, the head of the National Security Archive, a nonprofit outfit, tells me that his group will be filing a Freedom of Information Act request for the McCone transcripts and any others. The CIA will probably resist releasing such material if it exists. But it could turn out that the "Family Jewels" file is no more than a treasure map for the real pot of (historical) gold.

By the way, neither the Times nor the Post pointed out, as I did, that one of the lead "jewels" was censored from the documents released by the CIA (see below)--though they do note that the CIA did excise material before making this file public.

<http://www.davidcorn.com/archives/2007/06/more_family_jew.php>

<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/family_jewels_full_ocr.pdf>

[blm]

1. Big kick and debt of gratitude to National Security Archives.

.

[Spinzonner]

2. Wonder if he ever Renditioned himself

[Up2Late]

3. kick n/t

:kick:

[Up2Late]

4. kick n/t

:kick: