CIA To Declassify "Family Jewels" - 1973 Dossier On Agency Skeletons

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

http://rawstory.com/news/afp/CIA_to_..._06212007.html

Published: Thursday June 21, 2007

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.

Former CIA director James Schlesinger ordered the unearthing of the agency's skeletons in 1973.

The dossier was amassed by his deputy, William Colby, who later succeeded Schlesiger as CIA director.

Its contents eventually were shared with congressional committees and a presidential commission following revelations in the New York Times of CIA breakins, illegal wiretaps and surreptitious inspections of mail beginning in the 1950s.

But except for a few heavily censored pages from the collection, the CIA has kept "the family jewels" classified despite numerous Freedom of Information Act request seeking their release.

"This is the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency," Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a non-profit research group.

George Little, a CIA spokesman, said the declassified material will be posted on the agency's website as early as next week.

"Some of the documents will continue to contain redactions that bear on continuing matters of intelligence," he said.

Hayden said that the agency also is declassifying compilations of research and analysis of Soviet and Chinese internal politics codenamed CAESAR, POLO, and ESAU papers.

The collection contains 147 pages of documents, amounting to 11,000 pages of analysis between 1953 and 1973, he said.

This will be very interesting !!!

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Originally Posted by Chana3812

This will be very interesting !!!

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I think they're doing it as if to say, "See? We're not like that anymore. We would NEVER participate in something as dastardly as 9/11."

Remember those polls from 3 or 4 years ago that said something like 80% of American youths had complete faith in the military to "do the right thing"? The polls were measuring trust in various government institutions, and a surprising number expressed complete trust in the military and the government. Maybe that has changed in the meantime, but it reminded me of how each generation knows absolutely nothing about the previous generation, and it takes a monster like Bush & Co. to remind the kids of the sort of psychos that run the show.

Anyhoo, yes, this seems to be a PR campaign. I guess we only have to wait about 40 more years to find out what kind of nasty stuff the CIA did six years ago.