1973 report of illegal activities by the United States Central Intelligence Agency
Partlysanitized page from the "Family Jewels" files
TheFamily Jewels are a set of reports detailing illegal, inappropriate and otherwise sensitive activities conducted by theCentral Intelligence Agency from 1959 to 1973.[1]William Colby, theCIA director who received the reports, dubbed them the "skeletons in the CIA's closet".[1] Most of the documents were released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy.[2][3] The non-governmentalNational Security Archive filed a request for the documents under theFreedom of Information Act fifteen years before their release.[4][2]
The reports that constitute the CIA's "Family Jewels" were commissioned in 1973 by thenCIA directorJames R. Schlesinger in response to press accounts of CIA involvement in theWatergate scandal—in particular, support to the burglars,E. Howard Hunt andJames McCord, both CIA veterans.[1] On May 7, 1973, Schlesinger 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.[5] The resulting report, which was in the form of a 693-page loose-leaf book of memos, was passed on toWilliam Colby when he succeeded Schlesinger as Director of Central Intelligence in late 1973.[6]
The Central Intelligence Agency, directly violating its charter, conducted a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation during theNixon Administration against theantiwar movement and otherdissident groups in the United States according to well-placed Government sources.[8]
Additional details of the contents trickled out over the years, but requests by journalists and historians for access to the documents under theFreedom of Information Act were long denied. Finally, in June 2007, CIA DirectorMichael Hayden announced that the documents would be released to the public at an announcement made to the annual meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.[1] A six-page summary of the reports was made available at theNational Security Archive (based atGeorge Washington University), with the following introduction:
The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegalwiretapping, domestic surveillance,assassination plots, andhuman experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s.[4]
The complete set of documents, with some redactions (including a number of pages in their entirety), was released on the CIA website on June 25, 2007.[9]
Congressional investigators had access to the "Family Jewels" in the 1970s, and its existence was known for years before its declassification.[10][a]
The reports describe numerous activities conducted by the CIA from the 1950s to 1970s that may have violated its charter. According to a briefing provided by CIA Director William Colby to theJustice Department on December 31, 1974, these included 18 issues which were of legal concern:[12]
Then-President ofCuba,Fidel Castro, who was the target of multipleCIA assassination attempts reported in these documents, responded to their release on July 1, 2007, saying that the United States was still a "killing machine" and that the revealing of the documents was an attempt at diversion.[15][16]David Corn of the magazineThe Nation wrote that one key 'jewel' had been redacted and remained classified.[17] Writing forThe New York Times,Amy Zegart wrote: "Given all the illegal activities actually listed in this document, the hidden sections are all the more disturbing."[18]
In 2009, Daniel L. Pines, the Assistant General Counsel of the Office of General Counsel within the CIA, wrote alaw review published in theIndiana Law Journal challenging the assertion that most of the activities described within the Family Jewels were illegal during the time they were conducted.[19] In his conclusion, Pines wrote: "Admittedly, several of the operations mounted during that period failed to comply fully with the laws then in place. Yet, the vast majority of those operations did. Further, except for unconsenting human experimentation, each of the main types of activities depicted in the Family Jewels – targeted killings of foreign leaders, electronic surveillance of Americans, examination of U.S. mail, and collecting information on American dissident movements – was legal in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s."[20]
Mafia involvement in assassination attempts on Fidel Castro
According to the Family Jewels documents released, members of theAmerican mafia were involved in CIA attempts to assassinate Cuban leaderFidel Castro.[21] The documents showed that the CIA recruitedRobert Maheu, an ex-FBI agent and aide toHoward Hughes in Las Vegas, to approachJohnny Roselli under the pretense of representing international corporations that wanted Castro dead due to lost gambling interests.[21] Roselli introduced Maheu to mobster leadersSam Giancana andSanto Trafficante, Jr.[21] Supplied with six poison pills from the CIA, Giancana and Trafficante tried unsuccessfully to have people place the poison in Castro's food.[21]
^For example, in the August 27, 1988 edition ofThe Nation,David Corn wrote: "The public pillorying of the C.I.A. and the baring of its darkest secrets - what insiders call the family jewels - led to a loss of face for the spooks and a free fall in Company morale."[11]
^Hersh, Seymour (1974-12-22). "Huge C.I.A. operation reported in U.S. against antiwar forces, other dissidents in Nixon years".The New York Times. p. 1.
