CIA'sFamilyJewels
Bush...allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.
|
The CIA's Family Jewels
Agency Violated Charter for 25 Years,
Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents
Update - Full Report Now Available and Key Word Searchable
CIA Announces Declassification of 1970s "Skeletons" File,
Archive Posts Justice Department Summary from 1975,
With White House Memcons on Damage Control
National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 222
Edited by Thomas Blanton
Posted - June 21, 2007
Updated - June 26, 2007, 1 p.m.
For more information contact:
Thomas Blanton - 202/994-7000
|
 |
|
Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA's illegal domestic operations with a front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974.
|
|
|
In the news
Chronology of the CIA's record on declassification
|
Update - June 26, 2007, 1 p.m. - The full "family jewels" report, released today by the Central Intelligence Agency and detailing 25 years of Agency misdeeds, is now available on the Archive's Web site. The 702-page collection was delivered by CIA officers to the Archive at approximately 11:30 this morning -- 15 years after the Archive filed a Freedom of Information request for the documents.
The report is available for download in its entirety and is also split into five smaller files for easier download.
ALL FILES NOW KEY WORD SEARCHABLE!
|
Top Ten Most Interesting "Family Jewels"
Released by the CIA to the National Security Archive, June 26, 2007
1) Journalist surveillance - operation CELOTEX I-II ( pp. 26-30)
2) Covert mail opening, codenamed SRPOINTER / HTLINGUAL at JFK airport ( pp. 28, 644-45)
3) Watergate burglar and former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt requests a lock picker ( p. 107)
4) CIA Science and Technology Directorate Chief Carl Duckett "thinks the Director would be ill-advised to say he is acquainted with this program" (Sidney Gottlieb's drug experiments) ( p. 213)
5) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) reflecting Agency employee resentment against participation ( p. 326)
6) Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba ( p. 464)
7) Report of detention of Soviet defector Yuriy Nosenko ( p. 522)
8) Document describing John Lennon funding anti-war activists ( p. 552)
9) MHCHAOS documents (investigating foreign support for domestic U.S. dissent) ( pp. 591-93)
10) CIA counter-intelligence official James J. Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage, etc. ( pp. 599-603)
Plus a bonus "Jewel":
Warrantless wiretapping by CIA's Division D ( pp. 533-539)
|
Update - June 26, 2007, 11:00 a.m. - The Central Intelligence Agency has promised to deliver the long-secret "family jewels" report to the Archive within the hour. The complete report, as released by CIA, will be posted here as soon as we can scan it.
In the meantime, the Archive has posted the original memorandum, signed by then-CIA director James R. Schlesinger, ordering the "family jewels" study and calling on CIA employees to report to him any activities "which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency."
Washington D.C., June 21, 2007 - The Central Intelligence Agency violated its charter for 25 years until revelations of illegal wiretapping, domestic surveillance, assassination plots, and human experimentation led to official investigations and reforms in the 1970s, according to declassified documents posted today on the Web by the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
CIA director Gen. Michael Hayden announced today that the Agency is declassifying the full 693-page file amassed on CIA's illegal activities by order of then-CIA director James Schlesinger in 1973--the so-called "family jewels." Only a few dozen heavily-censored pages of this file have previously been declassified, although multiple Freedom of Information Act requests have been filed over the years for the documents. Gen. Hayden called the file "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency." The papers are scheduled for public release on Monday, June 25.
"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," commented Thomas Blanton, the Archive's director. Hayden also announced the declassification of some 11,000 pages of the so-called CAESAR, POLO and ESAU papers--hard-target analyses of Soviet and Chinese leadership internal politics and Sino-Soviet relations from 1953-1973, a collection of intelligence on Warsaw Pact military programs, and hundreds of pages on the A-12 spy plane.
The National Security Archive separately obtained (and posted today) a six-page summary of the illegal CIA activities, prepared by Justice Department lawyers after a CIA briefing in December 1974, and the memorandum of conversation when the CIA first briefed President Gerald Ford on the scandal on January 3, 1975. Then-CIA director Schlesinger commissioned the "family jewels" compilation with a May 9, 1973 directive after finding out that Watergate burglars E. Howard Hunt and James McCord (both veteran CIA officers) had cooperation from the Agency as they carried out "dirty tricks" for President Nixon. The Schlesinger directive, drafted by deputy director for operations William Colby, commanded senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past Agency matters that might fall outside CIA authority. By the end of May, Colby had been named to succeed Schlesinger as DCI, and his loose-leaf notebook of memos totaled 693 pages [see John Prados, Lost Crusader: The Secret Wars of CIA Director William Colby (Oxford University Press, 2003, pp. 259-260.] Seymour Hersh broke the story of CIA's illegal domestic operations with a front page story in the New York Times on December 22, 1974 ("Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents in Nixon Years"), writing that "a check of the CIA's domestic files ordered last year… produced evidence of dozens of other illegal activities… beginning in the nineteen fifties, including break-ins, wiretapping, and the surreptitious inspection of mail."
On December 31, 1974, CIA director Colby and the CIA general counsel John Warner met with the deputy attorney general, Laurence Silberman, and his associate, James Wilderotter, to brief Justice "in connection with the recent New York Times articles" on CIA matters that "presented legal questions." Colby's list included 18 specifics: 1. Confinement of a Russian defector that "might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws."
2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott.
3. Physical surveillance of muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including current Fox News anchor Brit Hume.
4. Physical surveillance of then Washington Post reporter Michael Getler.
5. Break-in at the home of a former CIA employee.
6. Break-in at the office of a former defector.
7. Warrantless entry into the apartment of a former CIA employee.
8. Mail opening from 1953 to 1973 of letters to and from the Soviet Union.
9. Mail opening from 1969 to 1972 of letters to and from China.
10. Behavior modification experiments on "unwitting" U.S. citizens.
11. Assassination plots against Castro, Lumumba, and Trujillo (on the latter, "no active part" but a "faint connection" to the killers).
12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971.
13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female and U.S. citizens in Detroit.
14. Surveillance of a CIA critic and former officer, Victor Marchetti.
15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus Americans related to the antiwar movement.
16. Polygraph experiments with the San Mateo, California, sheriff.
17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws.
18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits.
Read the Documents
Note: The following documents are in PDF format.
You will need to download and install the free Adobe Acrobat Reader to view.
Document 1: Summary of the Family Jewels
Memorandum for the File, "CIA Matters," by James A. Wilderotter, Associate Deputy Attorney General, 3 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
On New Years' eve, 1974, DCI Colby met with Justice Department officials, including Deputy Attorney General Laurence H. Silberman, to give them a full briefing of the "skeletons."
Document 2: Colby Briefs President Ford on the Family Jewels
Memorandum of Conversation, 3 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library
Ten days after the appearance of Hersh's New York Times story, DCI William Colby tells President Ford how his predecessor James Schlesinger (then serving as Secretary of Defense) ordered CIA staffers to compile the "skeletons" in the Agency's closet, such as surveillance of student radicals, illegal wiretaps, assassination plots, and the three year confinement of a Soviet defector, Yuri Nosenko.
Document 3: Kissinger's Reaction
Memorandum of Conversation between President Ford and Secretary of State/National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, 4 January 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford President Library
An apoplectic Kissinger argues that the unspilling of CIA secrets is "worse than the days of McCarthyism" when the Wisconsin Senator went after the State Department. Kissinger had met with former DCI Richard Helms who told him that "these stories are just the tip of the iceberg," citing as one example Robert F. Kennedy's role in assassination planning. Ford wondered whether to fire Colby, but Kissinger advised him to wait until after the investigations were complete when he could "put in someone of towering integrity." The "Blue Ribbon" announcement refers to the creation of a commission chaired by then-vice president Nelson A. Rockefeller.
Document 4: Investigations Continue
Memorandum of Conversation between Kissinger, Schlesinger, Colby et al., "Investigations of Allegations of CIA Domestic Activities," 20 February 1975
Source: Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library
Cabinet and sub-cabinet level officials led by Kissinger discuss ways and means to protect information sought by ongoing Senate (Church Committee) and House (Pike Committee) investigations of intelligence community abuses during the first decades of the Cold War. Worried about the foreign governments that have cooperated with U.S. intelligence agencies, Kissinger wants to "demonstrate to foreign countries that we aren't too dangerous to cooperate with because of leaks."
|
|
|
Contents of this Web site Copyright 1995-2007 National Security Archive. All rights reserved.
|
|
|
..allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.
Bush alters rules for CIA interrogations
By KATHERINE SHRADER, Associated Press Writer 39 minutes ago
President Bush breathed new life into the CIA's terror interrogation program Friday in an executive order that would allow harsh questioning of suspects, limited in public only by a vaguely worded ban on cruel and inhuman treatment.
The order bars some practices such as sexual abuse, part of an effort to quell international criticism of some of the CIA's most sensitive and debated work. It does not say what practices would be allowed.
The executive order is the White House's first public effort to reach into the CIA's five-year-old terror detention program, which has been in limbo since a Supreme Court decision last year called its legal foundation into question.
Officials would not provide any details on specific interrogation techniques that the CIA may use under the new order. In the past, its methods are believed to have included sleep deprivation and disorientation, exposing prisoners to uncomfortable cold or heat for long periods, stress positions and — most controversially — the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding.
The Bush administration has portrayed the interrogation operation as one of its most successful tools in the war on terror, while opponents have said the agency's techniques have left a black mark on the United States' reputation around the world.
Bush's order requires that CIA detainees "receive the basic necessities of life, including adequate food and water, shelter from the elements, necessary clothing, protection from extremes of heat and cold, and essential medical care."
A senior intelligence official would not comment directly when asked if waterboarding would be allowed under the new order and under related — but classified — legal documents drafted by the Justice Department.
However, the official said, "It would be wrong to assume the program of the past transfers to the future."
A second senior administration official acknowledged sleep is not among the basic necessities outlined in the order.
Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the order more freely.
Skeptical human rights groups did not embrace Bush's effort.
Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch, said the broad outlines in the public order don't matter. The key is in the still-classified guidance distributed to CIA officers.
As a result, the executive order requires the public to trust the president to provide adequate protection to detainees. "Given the experience of the last few years, they have to be naive if they think that is going to reassure too many people," he said.
The order specifically refers to captured al-Qaida suspects who may have information on attack plans or the whereabouts of the group's senior leaders. White House press secretary Tony Snow said the CIA's program has saved lives and must continue on a sound legal footing.
"The president has insisted on clear legal standards so that CIA officers involved in this essential work are not placed in jeopardy for doing their job — and keeping America safe from attacks," he said.
The five-page order reiterated many protections already granted under U.S. and international law. It said that any conditions of confinement and interrogation cannot include:
• Torture or other acts of violence serious enough to be considered comparable to murder, torture, mutilation or cruel or inhuman treatment.
• Willful or outrageous acts of personal abuse done to humiliate or degrade someone in a way so serious that any reasonable person would "deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency." That includes sexually indecent acts.
• Acts intended to denigrate the religion of an individual.
The order does not permit detainees to contact family members or have access to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
In a decision last year aimed at the military's tribunal system, the Supreme Court required the U.S. government to apply Geneva Convention protections to the conflict with al-Qaida, shaking the legal footing of the CIA's program.
Last fall, Congress instructed the White House to draft an executive order as part of the Military Commissions Act, which outlined the rules for trying terrorism suspects. The bill barred torture, rape and other war crimes that clearly would have violated the Geneva Conventions, but allowed Bush to determine — through executive order — whether less harsh interrogation methods can be used.
The administration and the CIA have maintained that the agency's program has been lawful all along.
In a message to CIA employees on Friday, Director Michael Hayden tried to stress the importance and narrow scope of the program. He noted that fewer than half of the less than 100 detainees have experienced the agency's "enhanced interrogation measures."
"Simply put, the information developed by our program has been irreplaceable," he said. "If the CIA, with all its expertise in counterterrorism, had not stepped forward to hold and interrogate people like (senior al-Qaida operatives) Abu Zubaydah and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the American people would be right to ask why."
For decades, the United States had two paths for questioning suspects: the U.S. justice system and the military's Army Field Manual.
However, after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration decided more needed to be done. With Zubaydah's capture in 2002, the CIA program was quietly created.
Since then, 97 terror suspects are believed to have been held by the agency at locations around the world, often referred to as "black sites."
The program sparked international controversy as details slowly emerged, with human rights groups saying the agency's work was a violation of international law, including the Third Geneva Convention's Common Article 3 protections, which set a baseline standard for the treatment of prisoners of war.
In September, Bush announced the U.S. had transferred the last 14 high-value CIA detainees to the military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they would stand trial. The CIA has held one detainee since then — an Iraqi who the U.S. considered one of al-Qaida's most senior operatives. He was also eventually transferred to Guantanamo.
___
Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann and Lara Jakes Jordan contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press.
Generals: Troops need to stay in Iraq
By ROBERT BURNS and LOLITA C. BALDOR, Associated Press Writers 46 minutes ago
U.S. military commanders said Friday the troop buildup in Iraq must be maintained until at least next summer and they may need as long as two years to ensure parts of the country are stable.
The battlefield generals' pleas for more time come in the face of growing impatience in the United States and a push on Capitol Hill to begin withdrawing U.S. troops as soon as this fall.
Maj. Gen. Rick Lynch, commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, said in an interview that if the buildup is reversed before next summer, the military will risk giving up the security gains it has achieved at a cost of hundreds of American lives over the past six months.
"It's going to take through summer, into the fall, to defeat the extremists in my battle space, and it's going to take me into next spring and summer to generate this sustained security presence," said Lynch, who commands U.S. forces south of Baghdad.
U.S. forces are working to build the Iraq military's ability to hold the gains made during the latest combat operations.
The White House said it still expects top commanders to deliver a report in September assessing the progress in Iraq, including whether the Iraqi government and its security forces have met 18 political and security benchmarks.
Pressure has reached a high level from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress for a change of course in the war — which is in its fifth year and has claimed the lives of more than 3,600 U.S. troops.
"There may be various generals or various politicians or others who want to mention some other key time, but I think the key time for the vast majority of my members is September," Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said Friday. "And it certainly is for me."
In Washington, White House officials said the timetable for assessing progress in Iraq has not changed and that September remains the next critical time frame for judging the course of the war. President Bush, who met with veterans and military families, accused Democrats of delaying action on money to upgrade equipment and give troops a pay raise.
However, the legislation is not an appropriations bill that feeds military spending accounts but a measure used by Congress to influence the management of major defense programs, set goals and guide the 2008 military spending bill. It is needed to authorize military pay raises, although Congress typically does not finish the bill before fall and then makes pay raises retroactive.
A military analyst said there is an obvious disconnect between a military focused on future success and politicians gripped by past failures.
"The Army generals in Iraq believe that it is only now that they are implementing the right strategy for securing the country, so they deserve more time to do the job right, despite the four years of failure," said Loren Thompson of the Virginia-based Lexington Institute.
Commanders have said they fully expect to provide the September report, but it may take much longer to determine whether the improvements are holding and the country is becoming stable.
Maj. Gen. W.E. Gaskin, U.S. commander in the Anbar province, said it would take two years before Iraqis can be self-sufficient in running their government and security forces.
Speaking to Pentagon reporters by video conference from Iraq, Gaskin said coalition efforts "have turned the corner ... broken the cycle of violence in Anbar." But, he added, "you cannot buy nor can you fast-forward experience. It has to be worked out."
The point was driven home by Gen. James Conway, commandant of the Marine Corps, who said in an address Friday at the National Press Club that a premature withdrawal could fuel Islamic extremists, spread terrorism and force the U.S. back into the fight.
"If you lose the first battles of a long war, the war gets tougher. If you win the first battles, you've got momentum on your side, and, guess what, the war is shorter," said Conway. "My concern is if we prematurely move, we're going to be going back. ... I tend to think it's better to get it done the first time."
Lynch, in an interview with two reporters who traveled with him by helicopter to visit troops south and west of Baghdad, said he had projected in March, when he arrived as part of the troop buildup, that it would take him about 15 months to accomplish his mission, which would be summer 2008.
He expressed concern at the growing pressure in Washington to decide by September whether the troop buildup is working and to plan for an early start to withdrawing all combat troops.
Under Lynch's command are two of the five Army brigades that Bush ordered to the Baghdad area in January as part of a revised counterinsurgency strategy. The three other brigades are in Baghdad and a volatile province northeast of the capital with the purpose of securing the civilian population.
Officials hope that reduced levels of sectarian violence will give Sunni and Shiite leaders an opportunity to create a government of true national unity.
Lynch said Iraqi security forces are not close to being ready to take over for the American troops. So if the extra U.S. troops that were brought in this year are to be sent home in coming months, the insurgents — both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups — will regain control, he said.
"To me, it would be wrong to take ground from the enemy at a cost — I've lost 80 soldiers under my command, 56 of those since the fourth of April — it would be wrong to have fought and won that terrain, only to turn around and give it back," he said.
Lynch said there is a substantial risk that al-Qaida in Iraq, a mostly Iraqi Sunni extremist group, will try to launch a mass-casualty attack on one of the 29 small U.S. patrol bases south of Baghdad in hopes of influencing the political debate in Washington.
"We've got him on the run," Lynch said, referring to the insurgents. "Some people say we've got him on the ropes. I don't believe that. But I believe we've got him on the run."
Lynch also said the Iraqi government needs to put about seven more Iraqi army battalions and about five more Iraqi police battalions in his area in order to provide the security now provided by U.S. forces.
Ultimately, he said, success or failure will be determined by the Iraqis themselves, and the outcome will not come quickly.
"This is Iraq. Everything takes time," he said.
____
Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Pauline Jelinek, also in Washington, contributed to this report.
Copyright © 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. The information contained in the AP News report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press
Last Update 2007-07-22 | Copyright© Charles Mingus 2008 | |
