CIA Violated Its Charter for 25 Years

CIA Violated Charter for 25 Years Wiretapped Journalists and Dissidents:

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 today's release "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different Agency."

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.

"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.

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, Lawrence 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 Britt 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.

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[themeaningoflife38]

Eisenhower & Nixon started the anti cuba operation, JFK got stuck with it. The same guys involved in watergate are the same ones who killed JFK. Hunt,Sturgis,Nixon,all bay pigs vets

[rspawn]

What's with this "we" stuff?

You dislike JFK; there's no "we" who cling to anything here.

If it had been up to the CIA and Pentagon, the world would not have survived the missile crisis. That's very well documented.

[KatieAnd5a5ah]

@batvette that was all over the gemstone file and onnassis wanted to protect his transsexuals...and jfk said, i'm tired of fucking jackie o...she used to be a man, i'd rather be with that pill head Monroe, she's a pillhead like me, and has the etiqquette of a damned horse. I'm tired of having to hide my pills from jackie and axct like i'm not a pillhead mafia booze boy, with a private jessica past!

[KatieAnd5a5ah]

@ikekll well. last i heard he was a cut-and- paste type of guy.Alex jones even called him darth vader, when he was on the same jesuit mafia cia team as him. still, you turn me off...oh...what a lucky man he was.

[KatieAnd5a5ah]

@MichaelPhillipWright Have you ever wanted a woman's bosom on yourself?

Can you picture Osama bin Laden or Israel crying in caves because they got little sugar tits from the hormones in the water and feel sintimental. Crying crying over my al queida crew...the hormones got my crying crying....i'm not crying for argentina, bitch

[KatieAnd5a5ah]

We are headed for the golden anniversery now, this is old news. Maybe they'll spray anthrax on us ---i'd prefer they pump estrogen in the water--and i told Israel to do that to palestein...so if you see them running around with sugar tits induced on them like mine--it was me. i started it. BUT i stole it from them, when they did it to some haitians. But i like being a transsexual...you people may not, we'll see.

[MichaelPhillipWright]

Former U.S. Senator David Boren is the mentor and sponsor of George Tenet. For more about this relationship see my video response and investigate the links in the text box.

[ikekll]

Anything heard from Tariq AZIZ since he was falsely imprisoned?

[ikekll]

American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, E. Howard Hunt

"2007 memoir American Spy: My Secret History in the CIA, Watergate and Beyond, E. Howard Hunt pulls open the curtain on covert history and details the existence of "Project Mockingbird," in which print and broadcast media players were used for both propaganda and active intelligence gathering inside the United States, a direct violation of what was then its technical legal function."

[KarlNemetski]

The CIA didn't violate its charter. Fuck you guys for ever implying that it did. Communist sympathizer scum bags you!

[batvette]

The plan that failed was his amended plan, it failed because of the changes he made, and many men lost their lives because of it. Most Americans would have supported an outright invasion, it was the peaceniks within his own party he feared.