The place I used to live in
Posted by SpikeJun 27
CIA Releases Two Significant Collections of Historical Documents
Two significant collections of previously classified historical documents are now available in the CIA’s FOIA Electronic Reading Room.The first collection, widely known as the “Family Jewels,” consists of almost 700 pages of responses from CIA employees to a 1973 directive from Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger asking them to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency’s charter.
The second collection, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of in-depth analysis and research from 1953 to 1973. The CAESAR and POLO papers studied Soviet and Chinese leadership hierarchies, respectively, and the ESAU papers were developed by analysts to inform CIA assessments on Sino-Soviet relations.
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.
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)
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)
Over at Wired, Noah Schachtman is blogging his way through the documents.
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