Posted on 06/26/2007 12:36:18 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON - The CIA released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.
The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders such as Fidel Castro, the testing of mind-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening of mail between the United States and the Soviet Union and China and break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.
The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels — President Ford's Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church committee and the House's Pike committee.
The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.
Among the more famous misdeeds were these:
_Castro plot: In August, 1960, the CIA recruited ex-FBI agent Robert Maheu, who was a top aide to Howard Hughes in Las Vegas, to approach mobster Johnny Roselli and pass himself off as the representative of international corporations who wanted Castro killed. Roselli introduced Maheu to "Sam Gold" and "Joe," who were actually 10-most wanted mobsters Momo Giancana, Al Capone's successor in Chicago, and Santos Trafficant. The CIA gave them six poison pills, and they tried unsuccessfully for several months to have several people put them in the Cuban leader's food. This particular plot was dropped after the failed CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, but other plots continued against Castro. Details of this plot first appeared in Jack Anderson's newspaper column in 1971.
Last week, CIA Director Michael Hayden told a conference of historians that "the documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."
CIA spokesman George Little said Hayden has been declassifying historic documents as a way of demonstrating CIA's accountability. "The collection was reviewed exhaustively by the Rockefeller Commission and congressional committees in the 1970s. Moreover, many of the documents have been released to the public on prior occasions," Little added.
These documents also were one of the products of the Watergate scandal. Then-CIA Director James Schlesinger was angered to read in the newspapers that the CIA had provided support to ex-CIA agents E. Howard Hunt and James McCord, who were convicted in the Watergate break-in. Hunt had worked for a secret "plumbers unit" in Richard Nixon's White House. The unit originally was tasked to investigate and end leaks of classified information but ultimately engaged in a wide range of misconduct.
In May 1973, Schlesinger ordered "all senior operating officials of this agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on the past, which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this agency." The law establishing the CIA barred it from conducting spying inside the United States.
The result was 693 pages of memos that arrived after Schlesinger had moved to the Pentagon and been replaced as CIA chief by William Colby. Colby ultimately reported the contents to the Justice Department.
"These are the top CIA officers all going into the confessional and saying, `Forgive me father, for I have sinned,' " said Thomas Blanton, director of the private National Security Archive, which had requested release of the documents under the Freedom of Information Act.
Inside the CIA, Colby referred to the documents as the "skeletons." But another name quickly caught on and stuck: "family jewels."
They first spilled into public view on Dec. 22, 1974, with a story by Seymour Hersh in The New York Times on the CIA's spying against antiwar and other dissidents inside this country. The agency assembled files on some 10,000 people.
Oh man, I hope you got his permission before posting this.
You do NOT want to mess with a ex-CIA guy!!! ;)
Actually I didn’t know about the plot in August of ‘60 to take out Castro. That would be under Eisenhower.
Agree. Hayden is turning out to be a wimp and that is very bad. Same for the caving in by some at NSA.
The National Security Archives was started by a a bunch of far-leftists and communist sympathizers. They are not friends of national security. Their goals are no honorable.
Re CIA and US surveillance. When I was an undercover operative/informant in 1968-1969, our “peace” groups had contacts with Soviet front operations including the World Peace Council and its British branch (Peggy Duff), and the Japanese Gensuiyken (Congress against the A & H Bombs).
The CIA had every right to follow these KGB-funded and aided groups in the US, though technically the FBI tookover surveillance once they landed in the U.S.
Other so-called “peace activists” had extensive contacts with Soviet KGB, Cuban DGI/KGB, Czech STB, and other Soviet block intellligence groups/fronts, as well as with Hanoi, Red China, and No. Korea.
This is what the CIA was doing in terms of “surveillance” of U.S. citizens (i.e. traitors).
More on this in the future.
Very interesting. Thanks.
The Castro operations were clearly foreign. US anti-war groups with possible Soviet support were a gray area. Kind of like “legal” US residents or citizens who are al Qaeda terrorists. Who does the investigation, FBI or CIA. This is one situation that does not need to be lost in a bureaucratic turf war.
More on this in the future.
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This adds a little new information on the Kennedy Assassination. Careful, Vincent Buligosi (and a few Oswald done it types around here) will insult the messenger. The deathbed confession of Howard E. Hunt indicates to me that either a CIA or CIA auxiliary did the deed. It is typical that covert teams may not know the actual mission, or be given misinformation about the mission. My examination of Oswald’s movements and diaries does not lead me to the conclusion that he was a meglomanicial, lone, crazed gunman. He was an intelligence agent under deep cover.
They should have offered more mullah for Fidel’s head.
At page 27 of the 702 page document on Family Jewels it says that during surveillance of Columnist Jack Anderson they also kept track of his “leg men” who were Britt Hume, Leslie Whitten and Joseph Spear. LOL
The timing of this is supicious.
bump
We just saw a repeat with Chavez. He up and left the country for a few days. When it was obvious we weren't going to help the people who overthrew him, he came back...and the rest is history.
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