The CIA Flashes Its ‘Family Jewels’

On Tuesday, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden made good on his pledge to declassify nearly 700 pages of documents about some of the agency’s dirtiest laundry from the past—its “family jewels”—including details about assassination plots, wiretapping and other alarming activities.

Washington Post:

Hayden became CIA director last summer in the midst of new allegations that the intelligence community crossed legal lines by torturing terrorism suspects at secret prisons and by conducting warrantless surveillance involving Americans. His decision to release the “family jewels,” responding to a 1992 Freedom of Information Act request, was meant to convince critics that the agency embraces openness when possible.

Some documents resonate with recent intelligence controversies. Several dealt with the agency’s domestic spying on anti-Vietnam War groups during the Johnson and Nixon years. One described an operation, begun under President Richard M. Nixon in late 1972, to track telephone calls between people stateside and overseas, and foreign calls routed through the United States.

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Click here to read the full report at the National Security Archive Web site.

AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta

Oh no, they didn’t!!!: National Security Archive officials Malcolm Byrne (left),  John Prados and Thomas Blanton (right) inspect the CIA’s “family jewels” Tuesday.