"Family Jewels" is the name of a set of reports that detail sensitive activities conducted by the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). Considered illegal or inappropriate, these actions were conducted from 1959 to 1973. William Colby, who was the CIA director who received the reports, dubbed them the "skeletons" in the CIA's closet. Most of the documents were publicly released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy. The non-governmental National Security Archive had filed a FOIA request fifteen years earlier.

Content

The reports describe numerous activities conducted by the CIA during the 1950s to 1970s that may have violated its charter. According to a briefing provided by CIA Director William Colby to the Justice Department on December 31, 1974, these included 18 issues which were of legal concern:

1. Confinement of a KGB defector, Yuri Ivanovich Nosenko, that "might be regarded as a violation of the kidnapping laws"
2. Wiretapping of two syndicated columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott (see also Project Mockingbird)[12]
3. Physical surveillance of investigative journalist and muckraker Jack Anderson and his associates, including Les Whitten of The Washington Post and future Fox News Channel anchor and managing editor Brit Hume. Jack Anderson had written two articles on CIA-backed assassination attempts on Cuban leader Fidel Castro
4. Physical surveillance of Michael Getler, then a Washington Post reporter, who was later an ombudsman for The Washington Post and PBS
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. Opening of mail to and from the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1973 (including letters associated with actress Jane Fonda) (project SRPOINTER/HTLINGUAL at JFK airport)
9. Opening of mail to and from the People's Republic of China from 1969 to 1972 (project SRPOINTER/HTLINGUAL at JFK airport – see also Project SHAMROCK by the NSA)
10. Funding of behavior modification research on unwitting US citizens, including unscientific, non-consensual human experiments[13] (see also Project MKULTRA concerning LSD experiments)
11. Assassination plots against Cuban President Fidel Castro; DR Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba; President Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic; and René Schneider, Commander-in-chief of the Chilean Army. All of these plots were said to be unsuccessful[14]
12. Surveillance of dissident groups between 1967 and 1971 (see Project RESISTANCE, Project MERRIMAC and Operation CHAOS)
13. Surveillance of a particular Latin American female, and of US citizens in Detroit
14. Surveillance of former CIA officer and Agency critic Victor Marchetti, author of the book The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence, published in 1974
15. Amassing of files on 9,900-plus US citizens related to the antiwar movement (see Project RESISTANCE, Project MERRIMAC and Operation CHAOS)
16. Polygraph experiments with the sheriff of San Mateo County, California
17. Fake CIA identification documents that might violate state laws
18. Testing of electronic equipment on US telephone circuits

Sources

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Family_Jewels_(Central_Intelligence_Agency)