In a curious turn of events, on Thursday CIA Director Michael V. Hayden told a conference of foreign policy historians that next week "The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses — the so-called 'family jewels' documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping, and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s," the Washington Post reported on its front page on Friday.[1] -- Also to be revealed are "accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of 'unwitting' tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs," wrote Pulitzer Prize-winning national security journalist Walter Pincus and his colleague, Karen De Young. -- Hayden was the lunchtime speaker at a meeting of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) in Chantilly, Virginia. -- Hayden's talk generated so much interest that it had to be moved several weeks ago to a larger venue. -- The SHAFR web site notes that on Saturday morning "a plethora of Kissinger scholars will give their thoughts and answers on the provocative question posed at the Roundtable, 'Henry Kissinger: Cold War Villain, International War Criminal, or Conventional Cold War Statesman?'" -- The conference's program can be viewed here. -- AP reported that "nearly 700 pages of materials" will be declassified next week.[2] -- Calling the gesture "a defense of openness unusual in an administration that has vigorously defended government secrecy," the Times said that Hayden has "also directed the release of 11,000 pages of cold-war documents on the Soviet Union and China, which were handed out on compact discs at the meeting."[3] -- Scott Shane pointed out that Hayden is "a history buff who holds two degrees in the field from Duquesne University, where he wrote a thesis on the Marshall Plan." -- All three news accounts noted that Hayden's claim that the CIA has changed its nature was rejected by Thomas S. Blanton, director of GWU's National Security Archive....
1.
Nation
Special reports
Intelligence
CIA TO AIR DECADES OF ITS DIRTY LAUNDRY
By Karen De Young and Walter Pincus
** Assassination Attempts Among Abuses Detailed **
Washington Post
June 22, 2007
Page A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102434.html
The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping, and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.
The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China, and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.
"Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history," Hayden said in a speech to a conference of foreign policy historians. The documents have been sought for decades by historians, journalists, and conspiracy theorists and have been the subject of many fruitless Freedom of Information Act requests.
In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government discussions of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.
A New York Times article by reporter Seymour Hersh about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published in December 1974, was "just the tip of the iceberg," then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger warned Ford, according to a Jan. 3 memorandum of their conversation.
Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow," saying, "For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro." Kennedy was the attorney general from 1961 to 1964.
Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.
In a meeting at which Colby detailed the worst abuses -- after telling the president "we have a 25-year old institution which has done some things it shouldn't have" -- Ford said he would appoint a presidential commission to look into the matter. "We don't want to destroy but to preserve the CIA. But we want to make sure that illegal operations and those outside the [CIA] charter don't happen," Ford said.
Most of the major incidents and operations in the reports to be released next week were revealed in varying detail during congressional investigations that led to widespread intelligence reforms and increased oversight. But the treasure-trove of CIA documents, generated as the Vietnam War wound down and agency involvement in Nixon's "dirty tricks" political campaign began to be revealed, is expected to provide far more comprehensive accounts, written by the agency itself.
The reports, known collectively by historians and CIA officials as the "family jewels," were initially produced in response to a 1973 request by then-CIA Director James R. Schlesinger. Alarmed by press accounts of CIA involvement in Watergate under his predecessor, Schlesinger asked the agency's employees to inform him of all operations that were "outside" the agency's legal charter.
This process was unprecedented at the agency, where only a few officials had previously been privy to the scope of its illegal activities. Schlesinger collected the reports, some of which dated to the 1950s, in a folder that was inherited by his successor, Colby, in September of that year.
But it was not until Hersh's article that Colby took the file to the White House. The National Security Archive release included a six-page summary of a conversation on Jan. 3, 1975, in which Colby briefed the Justice Department for the first time on the extent of the "skeletons."
Operations listed in the report began in 1953, when the CIA's counterintelligence staff started a 20-year program to screen and in some cases open mail between the United States and the Soviet Union passing through a New York airport. A similar program in San Francisco intercepted mail to and from China from 1969 to 1972. Under its charter, the CIA is prohibited from domestic operations.
Colby told Ford that the program had collected four letters to actress and antiwar activist Jane Fonda and said the entire effort was "illegal, and we stopped it in 1973."
Among several new details, the summary document reveals a 1969 program about CIA efforts against "the international activities of radicals and black militants." Undercover CIA agents were placed inside U.S. peace groups and sent abroad as credentialed members to identify any foreign contacts. This came at a time when the Soviet Union was suspected of financing and influencing U.S. domestic organizations.
The program included "information on the domestic activities" of the organizations and led to the accumulation of 10,000 American names, which Colby told Silberman were retained "as a result of the tendency of bureaucrats to retain paper whether they needed it or acted on it or not," according to the summary memo.
CIA surveillance of Michael Getler, then the *Washington Post*'s national security reporter, was conducted between October 1971 and April 1972 under direct authorization by then-Director Richard Helms, the memo said. Getler had written a story published on Oct. 18, 1971, sparked by what Colby called "an obvious intelligence leak," headlined "Soviet Subs Are Reported Cuba-Bound."
Getler, who is now the ombudsman for the Public Broadcasting Service, said yesterday that he learned of the surveillance in 1975, when the *Post* published an article based on a secret report by congressional investigators. The story said that the CIA used physical surveillance against "five Americans" and listed Getler, the late columnist Jack Anderson, and Victor Marchetti, a former CIA employee who had just written a book critical of the agency.
"I never knew about it at the time, although it was a full 24 hours a day with teams of people following me, looking for my sources," Getler said. He said he went to see Colby afterward, with Washington lawyer Joseph Califano. Getler recalled, "Colby said it happened under Helms and apologized and said it wouldn't happen again."
Personal surveillance was conducted on Anderson and three of his staff members, including Britt Hume, now with Fox News, for two months in 1972 after Anderson wrote of the administration's "tilt toward Pakistan." The 1972 surveillance of Marchetti was carried out "to determine contacts with CIA employees," the summary said.
CIA monitoring and infiltration of antiwar dissident groups took place between 1967 and 1971 at a time when the public was turning against the Vietnam War. Agency officials "covertly monitored" groups in the Washington area "who were considered to pose a threat to CIA installations." Some of the information "might have been distributed to the FBI," the summary said. Other "skeletons" listed in the summary included:
· The confinement by the CIA of a Russian defector, suspected by the CIA as a possible "fake," in Maryland and Virginia safe houses for two years, beginning in 1964. Colby speculated that this might be "a violation of the kidnapping laws."
· The "very productive" 1963 wiretapping of two columnists -- Robert Allen and Paul Scott -- whose conversations included talks with 12 senators and six congressmen.
· Break-ins by the CIA's office of security at the homes of one current and one former CIA official suspected of retaining classified documents.
· CIA-funded testing of American citizens, "including reactions to certain drugs."
The CIA documents scheduled for release next week, Hayden said yesterday, "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."
Barred by secrecy restrictions from correcting "misinformation," he said, the CIA is at the mercy of the press. "Unfortunately, there seems to be an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room," Hayden said.
Hayden's speech and some questions that followed evoked more recent criticism of the intelligence community, which has been accused of illegal wiretapping, infiltration of antiwar groups, and kidnapping and torturing of terrorism suspects.
"It's surely part of [Hayden's] program now to draw a bright line with the past," said National Security Archive Director Thomas S. Blanton. "But it's uncanny how the government keeps dipping into the black bag." Newly revealed details of ancient CIA operations, Blanton said, "are pretty resonant today."
2.
DOCUMENTS OFFER UNFLATTERING VIEW OF CIA
By Jennifer C. Kerr
Associated Press
June 22, 2007
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2007/06/22/ap3847262.html
WASHINGTON -- Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches, and more.
The documents provide a glimpse of nearly 700 pages of materials that the agency plans to declassify next week. A six-page summary memo that was declassified in 2000 and released by The National Security Archive at George Washington University on Thursday outlines 18 activities by the CIA that "presented legal questions" and were discussed with President Ford in 1975.
Among them:
--The "two-year physical confinement" in the mid-1960s of a Soviet defector.
--Assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro.
--CIA wiretapping in 1963 of two columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, following a newspaper column in which national security information was disclosed. The wiretapping revealed calls from 12 senators and six representatives but did not indicate the source of the leak.
--The "personal surveillances" in 1972 of muckraking columnist Jack Anderson and staff members, including Les Whitten and Brit Hume. The surveillance involved watching the targets but no wiretapping. The memo said it followed a series of "tilt toward Pakistan" stories by Anderson.
--The personal surveillance of *Washington Post* reporter Mike Getler over three months beginning in late 1971. No specific stories are mentioned in the memo.
--CIA screening programs, beginning in the early 1950s and lasting until 1973, in which mail coming into the United States was reviewed and "in some cases opened" from the Soviet Union and China.
Much of the decades-old activities have been known for years. But Tom Blanton, head of the National Security Archive, said the 1975 summary memo prepared by Justice Department lawyers had never been publicly released. It sheds light on meetings in the top echelon of government that were little known by the public, he said.
CIA Director Michael Hayden on Thursday called the documents being released next week unflattering, but he added that "it is CIA's history."
"The documents provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency," Hayden told a conference of historians.
Blanton pointed to more recent concerns, such as post-Sept. 11 programs that included government wiretapping without warrants. "The resonance with today's controversies is just uncanny," he said.
The long-secret documents being released next week were compiled at the direction of then-CIA Director James Schlesinger in 1973. In the wake of the Watergate scandal, he directed senior CIA officials to report immediately on any current or past agency matters that might fall outside the authority of the agency.
A separate memo, also dated 1975 and made public by the National Security Archive, discusses the briefing given to Ford detailing abuses by the spy agency. Then-CIA director William Colby tells the president that the CIA "has done some things it shouldn't have."
Among the activities discussed was the mail program in New York, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Of the airmail received from the Soviet Union, he said, "we have four (letters) to Jane Fonda."
3.
U.S.
Washington
C.I.A. TO RELEASE DOCUMENTS ON DECADES-OLD MISDEEDS
By Scott Shane
New York Times
June 22, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/22/washington/22cia.html
[PHOTO CAPTION: On Jan. 3, 1975, William E. Colby, right, the director of central intelligence, met with President Gerald R. Ford and advisers to discuss findings of past domestic spying and other transgressions by the C.I.A.]
The Central Intelligence Agency will make public next week a collection of long-secret documents compiled in 1974 that detail domestic spying, assassination plots, and other C.I.A. misdeeds in the 1960s and early 1970s, the agency’s director, Gen. Michael V. Hayden, said yesterday.
In an address to a group of historians who have long pressed for greater disclosure of C.I.A. archives, General Hayden described the documents, known as the “family jewels,” as “a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency.” He also directed the release of 11,000 pages of cold-war documents on the Soviet Union and China, which were handed out on compact discs at the meeting, in Chantilly, Va.
In a defense of openness unusual in an administration that has vigorously defended government secrecy, General Hayden said that when government withholds information, myth and misinformation often “fill the vacuum like a gas.” He noted a European Parliament report of 1,245 secret C.I.A. flights over Europe, a number interpreted in some news articles as the number of cases of “extraordinary rendition,” in which terrorism suspects were flown to prison in other countries.
In fact, General Hayden said, the agency has detained fewer than 100 people in its secret overseas detention program since the 2001 terrorist attacks. He said the questioning of those detainees, which in some cases has involved harsh physical treatment, had produced valuable information, contributing to more than 8,000 intelligence reports.
“C.I.A. recognizes the very real benefits that flow from greater public understanding of our work,” General Hayden said at yesterday’s meeting, a gathering of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations. But he also complained about “an instinct among some in the media today to take a few pieces of information, which may or may not be accurate, and run with them to the darkest corner of the room.”
Though the 1974 documents will not be released until Monday at the earliest, a research group in Washington posted related documents on the Web yesterday, including a 1975 Justice Department summary of domestic break-ins and wiretaps by the C.I.A. that may have violated American law. Also included were transcripts of three conversations in which President Gerald R. Ford was informed by aides of those activities by the agency.
In one of the conversations, Henry A. Kissinger, then serving as both secretary of state and national security adviser, denounced the efforts of William E. Colby, director of central intelligence, to push an aggressive investigation of the agency’s past transgressions.
Mr. Kissinger said the accusations then appearing daily about agency misconduct were “worse than in the days of McCarthy,” and expressed concern that they would intimidate C.I.A. officers, so that “you’ll end up with an agency that does only reporting and not operations.”
“What Colby has done is a disgrace,” Mr. Kissinger said, according to the transcript, posted along with the others by the National Security Archive at George Washington University (nsarchive.org).
“Should we suspend him?” Mr. Ford asked.
“No,” Mr. Kissinger replied, “but after the investigation is over you could move him and put in someone of towering integrity.”
A year later, Mr. Ford replaced Mr. Colby as director with George Bush.
In the 33 years since the nearly 700 pages of “family jewel” documents were compiled at the orders of Mr. Colby’s predecessor, James R. Schlesinger, much of their content has become known through leaks, testimony or partial disclosure. Most notably, the documents were described by government officials to Seymour M. Hersh, who reported on them in articles in the New York Times beginning on Dec. 22, 1974. The first article described “a massive, illegal domestic intelligence operation” that had produced C.I.A. files on some 10,000 Americans.
But the documents’ release next week may offer new details of a period of aggressive, and sometimes illegal, C.I.A. activities, directed particularly at American journalists who published leaked government secrets and activists who opposed the Vietnam War. The release also appears to signify a shift in attitude at the agency in the year that it has been led by General Hayden, a history buff who holds two degrees in the field from Duquesne University, where he wrote a thesis on the Marshall Plan.
Thomas S. Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, which obtains and publishes collections of once-secret government records, said the step announced yesterday might be the most important since at least 1998, when George J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, reversed a decision to release information on cold-war covert actions. “Applause is due,” Mr. Blanton said.
But Mr. Blanton took issue with General Hayden’s assurance that the current C.I.A. was utterly different from the pre-1975 institution. “There are uncanny parallels,” he said, “between events today and the stories in the family jewels about warrantless wiretapping and concern about violation of the kidnapping laws.”
The six-page 1975 Justice Department summary, of C.I.A. actions that some officers of the agency had reported as possible illegalities, included the 1963 wiretapping of two newspaper columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, who had written a column including “certain national security information.”
The document said those wiretaps had been approved after “discussions” with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy and Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara. A C.I.A. report described them as “very productive,” picking up calls of 12 senators and 6 members of the House, among others.