CIA to declassify "family jewels" -- 1973 dossier

[cal04]

CIA to declassify "family jewels" -- 1973 dossier on agency skeletons

The CIA said Thursday it has decided to declassify most of a voluminous 1973 file known as "the family jewels," which details some of the agency's most notorious operations.


Assassination plots, human experimentation, illegal wiretaps and surveillance of journalists in the 1950s through the early 1970s are among the activities documented in the 693-page file, according to previously released documents about "the family jewels."

"Much of it has been in the press before, and most of it is unflattering, but it is CIAs history," CIA director Michael Hayden, who announced the decision in a speech to the Society of Historians of American Foreign Relations.

"The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency," he said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070621/pl_afp/usintelligencecia_070621232255

[Solly Mack]

1. yeah...right.... different

[Journeyman]

2. It's true -- back then they wore double-breasted brown suits, today it's blue blazers. . .

how much more different can they be?

[Solly Mack]

3. Damn good point!

I stand corrected.

[RaleighNCDUer]

4. Yup, those were the good ol days -

and they will be again.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

5. I'll see a "difference" when some of the perpetrators, past and current, are put on trial.

[librechik]

6. so I guess we can expect them to de-classify 9/11/Iraq documents about 2042

or never.

[global1]

7. They Are Releasing It So * Can Say - See We're Not So Bad ...

look what they did.

[glitch]

8. Uh oh, Poppy just puked and burst into tears. Gonna be trouble in Kennebunkport tonight. nt

[peacetalksforall]

9. Different? They used to train x, now they train y - in torment and torture.

Now they train private mercenaries to do what soldeirs do and more. They are all probably on the same pay grade.

Speaking of terrorists - how's Miami's favorite - Luis Posada Carilles? Still out of jail? Still not extradited?

[notadmblnd]

10. so they're going to throw out a bone in an attempt to distract us?

[struggle4progress]

12. Well, that's how the CIA held off the Church Committee in the 1970's

A few stories about trying to make Fidel's beard fall out and such, so everyone could say tsk!tsk! and then move along, convinced there was nothing else to see.

[Octafish]

11. There are other, deeper secrets that will not be revealed.

[cal04]

13. CIA to Air Decades of Its Dirty Laundry

Assassination Attempts Among Abuses Detailed
The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.

(snip)
A New York Times article by reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102434.html?hpid=topnews

[glitch]

14. Ah, so it's just Dem dirtly laundry. Trying to even the playing field on horror.

Or just make Americans sick of the lot of them. Whatever it takes to keep the voters home. At first I thought it might be a shot across the BFEE bow, but if it's all just the Dem corruption I take that thought back.