CIA to air decades of it's dirty laundry ...
Only we do this ... good/bad?
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CIA to air decades of its dirty laundry
Assassination attempts, domestic spying among the abuses
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.
More U.S. news
"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 deliberations 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.
An article about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh 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. 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.
Treasure-trove of documents
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
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19360920/.[8D]
[:0]
CIA to air decades of its dirty laundry
Assassination attempts, domestic spying among the abuses
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.
More U.S. news
"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 deliberations 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.
An article about the CIA's infiltration of antiwar groups, published by New York Times reporter Seymour Hersh 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. 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.
Treasure-trove of documents
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
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19360920/.[8D]
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Patriot Act. 0 -
That little bit of dirty laundry is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. As long as the CIA is effective in protecting the interests of this nation on a global scale, do we really need to know how they do it? 0 -
Rest assured it's only the tip. The only thing I really have issue with is the domestic stuff. I don't think they have any "jurisdiction" inside the US. 0 -
quote:Originally posted by bigtire
That little bit of dirty laundry is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. As long as the CIA is effective in protecting the interests of this nation on a global scale, do we really need to know how they do it?
I have serious doubts that the CIA is effective at doing anything but eroding our civil liberties, and creating foreign policy disasters.
Case in point: Osama Bin Laden. First they armed and trained him, then they totally dropped the ball on 9/11, when Osama returned to 'repay' their kindness.
The CIA, like the ATF, needs to be liquidated.0 -
I think the CIA does dirty jobs that Americans won't take.
Doug0 -
I think you're right - God Bless'em!
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It should be really interesting. I would like to see the same thing happen relating to WWII. 0 -
i think some things are best left unsaid. 0 -
They're releasing documents relating to activities between the fifties and the seventies. So the newest are over 25 years old.
I think it's a good thing. In this country we discuss and debate our methods and policies. With highly sensitive subjects (CIA and it's operations) we sometimes have the debate 25 years after the fact, but that's still worth something; it can still shape the way our institutions run in the future.
Yes, they will catch flack for a lot of what they did. They will catch flack for some things that may not have been possible to do other than how they did them. If they had no chance of catching flack, they probably wouldn't deliberate quite so carefully about whether to do the the things they do. Even knowing you're going to be audited 25 years down the line may cause a person to think carefully before he acts.
Edit: Plus, it's bound to be interesting to find out what's in those documents.0 -
quote:Originally posted by MosinNagantDisciple
quote:Originally posted by bigtire
That little bit of dirty laundry is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. As long as the CIA is effective in protecting the interests of this nation on a global scale, do we really need to know how they do it?
I have serious doubts that the CIA is effective at doing anything but eroding our civil liberties, and creating foreign policy disasters.
Case in point: Osama Bin Laden. First they armed and trained him, then they totally dropped the ball on 9/11, when Osama returned to 'repay' their kindness.
The CIA, like the ATF, needs to be liquidated.
1.) there has never been ANY credible evidence that OBL was in the employ of the CIA at any time. Pure urban legend.
2.) even if he was, he was willing to fight the commies in Afghanistan for us and last time I checked, no one, not even the CIA, has a crystal ball that can predict with perfect exactitude all the possible consequences and ramifications of a policy entered into under the exigencies and pressures of the the moment and realpolitik.0 -
quote:Originally posted by nemesisenforcer
quote:Originally posted by MosinNagantDisciple
quote:Originally posted by bigtire
That little bit of dirty laundry is most likely only the tip of the iceberg. As long as the CIA is effective in protecting the interests of this nation on a global scale, do we really need to know how they do it?
I have serious doubts that the CIA is effective at doing anything but eroding our civil liberties, and creating foreign policy disasters.
Case in point: Osama Bin Laden. First they armed and trained him, then they totally dropped the ball on 9/11, when Osama returned to 'repay' their kindness.
The CIA, like the ATF, needs to be liquidated.
1.) there has never been ANY credible evidence that OBL was in the employ of the CIA at any time. Pure urban legend.
2.) even if he was, he was willing to fight the commies in Afghanistan for us and last time I checked, no one, not even the CIA, has a crystal ball that can predict with perfect exactitude all the possible consequences and ramifications of a policy entered into under the exigencies and pressures of the the moment and realpolitik.
How nice...
I bet you wouldn't be defending the CIA if it had been Carter or Clinton who had given money and training to Bin Laden.0 -
Simply misdirection, their feeling the heat as the public comes closer to finding about the Elvis guarded aliens they keep in a freezer in Bigfoots cave. 0
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