The CIA's Family Jewels

[John Simkin]

The Irish Independent on this story:

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/north...ast-742396.html

Tom Baldwin

Saturday June 23 2007

The CIA is to declassify records detailing some of its past illegal activities, which ranged from assassination plots and kidnapping to infiltration of anti-war groups and testing behavioural drugs on 'unwitting' US civilians.

The secret documents, long known in intelligence circles as the 'family jewels', covering the period between the 1950s and the 1970s - an era of Cold War 'dirty tricks' and ructions in the US over Vietnam.

CIA director Michael Hayden said the 700 pages of records would "provide a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency". He added: "Most of it is unflattering, but it is CIA's history."

He hopes the declassification will correct some long-standing rumours about even worse CIA abuses, saying: "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."

On Thursday the National Security Archive published a shorter document showing internal discussions of the abuses. These include a memo of a conversation between President Gerald Ford and then secretary of state Henry Kissinger in January 1975. Dr Kissinger warns that if secret operations are divulged "blood will flow" and "this could end up worse for the country than Watergate".

He cites as an example that Robert Kennedy - the attorney-general in the Administration of his brother, President John F Kennedy - had "personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro".

In a later memo, Dr Kissinger expresses exasperation about the illegality of domestic surveillance on American citizens, saying: "The British can't understand us. [Jim] Callaghan [then British Prime Minister] says insiders are routinely tapped." Dr Kissinger also voices concern that possible prosecutions would stymie CIA operations. "The result could be the drying up of imaginations . . . on which we depend," he said.

Among the 18 activities listed in a 1975 summary memo that "presented legal questions" and caused such panic in Washington were the "two-year physical confinement" in the mid-1960s of a Soviet defector, assassination plots of foreign leaders, CIA wiretapping of journalists and burglaries of homes or offices.

The disclosures will shed further light on CIA-funded experiments on US citizens showing 'reactions to certain drugs', and interception of mail from the Soviet Union and China - including letters to anti-Vietnam War activist Jane Fonda.

Mr Hayden clearly believes the publication will draw a line under the past.

The presence at the White House yesterday of the Vietnamese President, Nguyen Minh Triet, the first such visit since the end of the war, underlined how America had moved on. Mr Nguyen said talk of the war was outdated: "Vietnam is peace. Vietnam is friendship. Vietnam is developing dynamically and creatively."

In the past week, however, memories were rekindled when Vice-President Dick Cheney was accused of seeking to circumvent the system for overseeing classified documents - and then trying to abolish the National Archives office that challenged his actions.

Here is Prensa Latina's take on the story:

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7...amp;language=EN

Washington, Jun 23 (Prensa Latina) Former US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, brother of murdered President John F. Kennedy, personally headed a ploy to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, a memorandum by the White House reveals Saturday.

The document, disclosed by the George Washington University s National Security Archive, refers to a conversation between former President Gerard Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on January 4, 1975.

In the talk, Kissinger told Ford that once CIA director Richard Helms confirmed Robert Kennedy led an assassination plan against the Cuban leader.

"Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro," Kissinger told Ford.

The archives corroborate arbitrary actions of domestic surveillance, kidnappings, assassination plots against foreign leaders, and chemical trials with humans, among other shocking disclosures.

Current CIA director Michael Hayden stated on Thursday that all of declassified documents will be made known next week, though some information was already divulged by the National Security Archive s web page.

The intelligence reports, with the allegoric name "The Family Jewels," also provide details on infiltration of leftist groups in Latin America and other world regions in the 1960s.

Furthermore, it will be disclosed how the CIA organized its espionage in China, Cuba, and the former Soviet Union, and its constant supervision of several US journalists, according to the sources.

[John Simkin]

It is possible that these released documents is an attempt to undermine David Talbot's book "Brothers". For example, the Prensa Latina's article says:

Former US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, brother of murdered President John F. Kennedy, personally headed a ploy to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, a memorandum by the White House reveals Saturday.

The document, disclosed by the George Washington University s National Security Archive, refers to a conversation between former President Gerard Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on January 4, 1975.

In the talk, Kissinger told Ford that once CIA director Richard Helms confirmed Robert Kennedy led an assassination plan against the Cuban leader.

"Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro," Kissinger told Ford.

The newspaper is suggesting that Kissinger's comments are definitely true. However, the story came from Helms and was probably part of a disinformation campaign against Robert Kennedy.

It will be very interesting if the CIA publish Cleveland Cram's report on "The Family Jewels". He not only saw the documents but interviewed the CIA officers involved. I have read Cram's other report that he wrote for the CIA, "Of Moles and Molehunters: A Review of Counterintelligence Literature". This document was declassified in 2003. It is an impressive piece of work. Cram, who was a talented historian before he was recruited by the CIA, is both perceptive and honest.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/JFKcramC.htm

[Jack White]

Robert: "...think the big picture, with these types of thing's is not even the actions themselves as much, as the ones who order it, or allow it to happen. Which us why I despise Cheney and Rumsfeld, they were part of Nixon's goon squad, and now American's seem to have forgotten what goon's are."

Interestingly, a republican initiative apparently centered in Dallas is a cyber division aimed at disrupting opponenets.

'Cybergoons'

http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.ph...p;hl=Cybergoons

"During the Republican National Convention, a group of hackers called RightWingExtremist.net was formed by Brett Chance (elac, clorox, awb0t, etc) from Plano TX. This group came out of the ultra conservative ProtestWarrior.com who advocates disrupting and attacking leftist organizations.

.....a group calling itself the g00ns.com have attacked and defaced a dozen indymedia websites using the vulnerability posted to dadaimc. On the hacked websites, a message calling indymedia 'liars' and 'anti-republicans' were posted. Soon after, hackers and indymedia techs started working together to fix each other's code and bring backups back online as well as find information about the g00ns.

The g00ns started out by targetting and attacking online gaming clan websites, but eventually Elac from RightWingExtremist.net joined up and started to turn the group farther to the right. When the IndyMedia sites were hacked, people started to gather information and infiltrate their organization and soon after all of their private details were released to the public to show like actions like this will not go unnoticed.

Many other right-wing trolls continue to try to disrupt IndyMedia and left-wing protest groups. These individuals operate under several different names including ProtestWarrior.com, RightWingExtremist.net, FreeRepublic.com, KobeHQ.com, FreeDominion.com, LittleGreenFootballs.com, and more. Many of these groups are suspected of being financed operations from governments or corporations similar to the COINTELPRO program from the 60s and 70s. Common activities range from flooding message boards, faking votes and reviews in online polls, releasing personal information of key organizers, spreading false rumors and scandals, etc."

OrgName: ThePlanet.com Internet Services, Inc.

OrgID: TPCM

Address: 1333 North Stemmons Freeway

Address: Suite 110

City: Dallas

StateProv: TX

PostalCode: 75207

Country: US

ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.theplanet.com:4321

NetRange: 70.84.0.0 - 70.87.127.255

CIDR: 70.84.0.0/15, 70.86.0.0/16, 70.87.0.0/17

NetName: NETBLK-THEPLANET-BLK-13

NetHandle: NET-70-84-0-0-1

Parent: NET-70-0-0-0-0

NetType: Direct Allocation

NameServer: NS1.THEPLANET.COM

NameServer: NS2.THEPLANET.COM

name: www.g00ns.com

data: 147.70-84-85.reverse.theplanet.com

Little Green Footballs brought down the DellaRosa JFKforum two or three times,

mostly by flooding with messages. The Swiftboat Veterans also did similar

things.

Jack

A CORRECTION:

Rich tells me that I have misremembered that "Little

Green Footballs" hacked his forum. His forum was disrupted

twice by disgruntled former members, and five other times

he traced disruptions to sites in Turkey, Netherlands,

United Kingdom, and twice from Dallas. Sorry about the

"footballs"; I think they made personal attacks on my views

during the last election as I recall.

Sorry for my faulty memory. All hackers like this are despicable.

Jack

[John Simkin]

The "new" CIA is reviving one of its oldest dirty tricks with this Bobby Kennedy smear. And yes, consider the sources-- Kissinger and Helms. I explain the genesis of this attack on RFK in my book. I just blogged about it in Salon. Here's part of what I wrote:

The CIA's new honesty is also far from complete. There is nothing in the family jewels about agency officials long suspected by congressional investigators and researchers of ties to the Kennedy assassination, including deceased agents such as William Harvey, David Phillips, David Morales and George Joannides. The agency continues to keep these records under wraps, in brazen defiance of the law.

In fact, the agency could not help taking another whack at the Kennedys with the release of its family jewels. Press reports about the declassified CIA secrets laid the blame for the assassination efforts against Fidel Castro directly on then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy. What's the original source for this anti-Kennedy smear? None other than Richard Helms, the No. 2 man at the CIA during the Kennedy presidency and a bitter enemy of the two brothers.

Helms, desperately trying to head off congressional investigations into CIA abuses in the post-Watergate period, warned that he would drag RFK -- by then conveniently dead -- into the Castro controversy. By doing this, the wily Helms was clearly trying to intimidate the Democratic-controlled Congress. At a lunch meeting in January 1975, Helms told his friend Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that "Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro" -- confident that Kissinger would spread this around Washington, as he quickly did. Helms knew his accusation against RFK was a lie, and when later pressed by the Church Committee to provide proof, he could not, admitting that the CIA had misled Bobby about its plots. In truth, RFK was appalled when he learned that the agency was collaborating with the Mafia to kill Castro -- and Kennedy believed that he shut down this sinister operation. But he did not succeed -- the CIA continued to conspire against Castro for years after the Kennedys were removed from power.

Spreading poisonous disinformation about the Kennedys has long been one of the CIA's oldest family jewels. Helms' loyal aide Sam Halpern was a master at disseminating these lies to the press for years. But don't expect the agency to come clean about this any time soon.

PS The fact that media is once again falling for this old lie -- including NPR's Daniel Schorr, the blithering idiot Chris Matthews, CNN etc -- once again shows how deeply misinformed the press is about this hugely important chapter in our history. I can't tell you how fed up I am with my profession.

As Michael V. Hayden is a Republican appointee it is possible that the whole purpose of these declassified files is to discredit former leaders of the Democratic Party (John and Robert Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter, etc.) For example, it will be interesting if these documents tell us about the illegal activities of people like Dwight Eisenhower and George H. W. Bush.

[William Kelly]

The Irish Independent on this story:

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/north...ast-742396.html

Tom Baldwin

Saturday June 23 2007

The CIA is to declassify records detailing some of its past illegal activities, which ranged from assassination plots and kidnapping to infiltration of anti-war groups and testing behavioural drugs on 'unwitting' US civilians.

The secret documents, long known in intelligence circles as the 'family jewels', covering the period between the 1950s and the 1970s - an era of Cold War 'dirty tricks' and....

On Thursday the National Security Archive published a shorter document showing internal discussions of the abuses. These include a memo of a conversation between President Gerald Ford and then secretary of state Henry Kissinger in January 1975. Dr Kissinger warns that if secret operations are divulged "blood will flow" and "this could end up worse for the country than Watergate".

He cites as an example that Robert Kennedy - the attorney-general in the Administration of his brother, President John F Kennedy - had "personally managed the operation on the assassination ........

Here is Prensa Latina's take on the story:

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7...amp;language=EN

Washington, Jun 23 (Prensa Latina) Former US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, brother of murdered President John F. Kennedy, personally headed a ploy to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, a memorandum by the White House reveals Saturday.

The document, disclosed by the George Washington University s National Security Archive, refers to a conversation between former President Gerard Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on January 4, 1975.

In the talk, Kissinger told Ford that once CIA director Richard Helms confirmed Robert Kennedy led an assassination plan against the Cuban leader.

"Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro," Kissinger told Ford.

...............

So now we have Henry Kiss Kissinger, Dick Helms, Ed Lansdale and LBJ's AG Ramsey Clark all saying, in three part harmony, that RFK was behind a Castro assassination operation.

Over a decade ago, when Tom Waldman of Ultimate Sac, wanted to give a talk to COPA, John Judge said that the next layer of the cover story was that RFK approved the Castro hit that killed JFK in the blowback.

Judge noted that the designed cover story had many levels, beginning with Castro responsible (PDS Phase One), replaced by Lone-nut (P2), and the multitude of conspiracy (CIA, Mafia, KGB), eventually getting to the RFK scenario.

Judge said then that "when it gets to the point that they have to acknowlege a poltical conspiracy, then they're going to say that Bobby ordered Castro killed and they were sons of bitches anyway, and deserved to die."

BK

[Robert Howard]

The Irish Independent on this story:

http://www.independent.ie/world-news/north...ast-742396.html

Tom Baldwin

Saturday June 23 2007

The CIA is to declassify records detailing some of its past illegal activities, which ranged from assassination plots and kidnapping to infiltration of anti-war groups and testing behavioural drugs on 'unwitting' US civilians.

The secret documents, long known in intelligence circles as the 'family jewels', covering the period between the 1950s and the 1970s - an era of Cold War 'dirty tricks' and....

On Thursday the National Security Archive published a shorter document showing internal discussions of the abuses. These include a memo of a conversation between President Gerald Ford and then secretary of state Henry Kissinger in January 1975. Dr Kissinger warns that if secret operations are divulged "blood will flow" and "this could end up worse for the country than Watergate".

He cites as an example that Robert Kennedy - the attorney-general in the Administration of his brother, President John F Kennedy - had "personally managed the operation on the assassination ........

Here is Prensa Latina's take on the story:

http://www.plenglish.com/article.asp?ID=%7...amp;language=EN

Washington, Jun 23 (Prensa Latina) Former US Attorney General Robert Kennedy, brother of murdered President John F. Kennedy, personally headed a ploy to assassinate Cuban President Fidel Castro, a memorandum by the White House reveals Saturday.

The document, disclosed by the George Washington University s National Security Archive, refers to a conversation between former President Gerard Ford and his Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, on January 4, 1975.

In the talk, Kissinger told Ford that once CIA director Richard Helms confirmed Robert Kennedy led an assassination plan against the Cuban leader.

"Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of Castro," Kissinger told Ford.

...............

So now we have Henry Kiss Kissinger, Dick Helms, Ed Lansdale and LBJ's AG Ramsey Clark all saying, in three part harmony, that RFK was behind a Castro assassination operation.

Over a decade ago, when Tom Waldman of Ultimate Sac, wanted to give a talk to COPA, John Judge said that the next layer of the cover story was that RFK approved the Castro hit that killed JFK in the blowback.

Judge noted that the designed cover story had many levels, beginning with Castro responsible (PDS Phase One), replaced by Lone-nut (P2), and the multitude of conspiracy (CIA, Mafia, KGB), eventually getting to the RFK scenario.

Judge said then that "when it gets to the point that they have to acknowlege a poltical conspiracy, then they're going to say that Bobby ordered Castro killed and they were sons of bitches anyway, and deserved to die."

BK

FWIW, I went out and purchased E.H. Hunt's American Spy, and although I don't have the luxury these day's of reading books cover to cover, I did try to get the basic thrust of it.

Salient Point - Ironic isn't it after all those years of secretiveness about 11/22/63 by Hunt he jumps headfirst into the conspiratorial aspects of Dealey Plaza; what leaped off the pages to me was how Landslide Lyndon was offered up on the platter as Mister "means motive and opportunity."

While he was undoubtedly correct in his postulation, the fact that LBJ was a Democrat and Hunt chose not to explore other important political figures and their connections such as Nixon's link to Ruby, as a HUAC informer way back when, that point was certainly not lost on me, neither was it a spur of the moment idea for the book, I would imagine.

Saint John's contribution to the subject was much more noteworthy as far as I was concerned;

Shocking that Hunt didn't talk about the photo that pop's up on the Forum occasionally of someone who looks a lot like him in Dallas that day; if it wasn't Hunt, someone did a damn good job of trying to look like him....

Little Green Football's and such are they the wave of the future, [apologies to screenplay writers of The Aviator] inside joke

[Shanet Clark]

John and colleagues:

Hayden is an interesting fellow, the military

chief of the civilian agency was invited to

my groups convention and I knew he

was going to speak but couldn't quite

travel to the Washington conference of my group

SHAFR the Society for Historians of Foreign Relations

they have an excellent quarterly journal called

DIPLOMATIC HISTORY and this release of the

family jewels by Hayden announced at the conference

is quite a ""COUP"" for my professional association and

their conference...............little credit has been given to

the group and journal SHAFR's Diplomatic History

contributed to this in a similar way as the national security archive

[Joel D. Gruhn]

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.

see: http://www.foia.cia.gov/

http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp?do...p;showPage=0001

Joel Gruhn

[William Kelly]

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.

see: http://www.foia.cia.gov/

http://www.foia.cia.gov/browse_docs.asp?do...p;showPage=0001

Joel Gruhn

Of course the first item is redacted, #2 is John Rosselli, #3 MOCKINGBIRD, and the entire 007 page is redacted.

It seems some of the Family Jewels have gone missing.

We get all the costume jewerly at the garage sale.

BK

[Shanet Clark]

Schlesinger and Colby only documented the stuff that

was likely to break in the press. The 750 page binder

was a limited hang out / negotiating ploy..............

MK/ULTRA and the counter intelligence programs

less well known than say Nosenko

were deep sixtied..........

Edited June 26, 2007 by Shanet Clark

[Edward Haslam]

Flash: CIA Family Jewel # 1 still censored. What is it? From www.TheMonkeyVirus.com

On Tuesday, June 26, 2007 the CIA released a memo from the CIA Director of Security to the CIA Management Committee ( CIA Director, Deputy Director, etc.) The memo lists “illegal operations” conducted by the CIA from March 1959 to June 1964. These projects are what the CIA considers the “skeletons” in the CIA closet. The memo entitled the list “FAMILY JEWELS.” JEWEL # 1 is presumably the most important and egregious on the list. Yet, it is still completely censored 35+ years after the memo was written. Given the other items on the list include CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro and the role of Attorney General Robert Kennedy is planning assassinations, why is JEWEL #1 still censored? To see this page, click JEWEL # 1. Following the summary list are explanations of each item. Every single word of the 3 page description of JEWEL # 1 is completely censored. Every single word. What are they hiding 35 years later? To see the whole document, click FAMILY JEWELS. My thanks to the National Security Archives for helping to make these documents available to the public. Is FAMILY JEWEL # 1 the bio-weapon discussed in Dr. Mary’s Monkey? If they will disclose it, I will stop speculating. In the meantime, I think it is a fair question. >>> Ed Haslam, links work from inside www.TheMonkeyVirus.com

[William Kelly]

Flash: CIA Family Jewel # 1 still censored. What is it? From www.TheMonkeyVirus.com

On Tuesday, June 26, 2007 the CIA released a memo from the CIA Director of Security to the CIA Management Committee ( CIA Director, Deputy Director, etc.) The memo lists "illegal operations" conducted by the CIA from March 1959 to June 1964. These projects are what the CIA considers the "skeletons" in the CIA closet. The memo entitled the list "FAMILY JEWELS." JEWEL # 1 is presumably the most important and egregious on the list. Yet, it is still completely censored 35+ years after the memo was written. Given the other items on the list include CIA-Mafia plots against Fidel Castro and the role of Attorney General Robert Kennedy is planning assassinations, why is JEWEL #1 still censored? To see this page, click JEWEL # 1. Following the summary list are explanations of each item. Every single word of the 3 page description of JEWEL # 1 is completely censored. Every single word. What are they hiding 35 years later? To see the whole document, click FAMILY JEWELS. My thanks to the National Security Archives for helping to make these documents available to the public. Is FAMILY JEWEL # 1 the bio-weapon discussed in Dr. Mary's Monkey? If they will disclose it, I will stop speculating. In the meantime, I think it is a fair question. >>> Ed Haslam, links work from inside www.TheMonkeyVirus.com

Hey, "They call me" Gus Russo checks in, with fill in the blanks with your own conspiracy theory, belittling all....except the best.

http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/...articleID=30719

[Edward Haslam]

Once again, Gus Russo is close. Quoting Russo (thanks to Bill Kelly)...

<<< What actually jumped out at this writer (Gus Russo) was the cover letter by Howard Osborne, the CIA’s former Director of Security and author of the compilation. Osborne’s memo serves as an introduction and brief description of the episodes he catalogued in the remaining 701 pages. Osborne’s bullet-point list, which notes the aforementioned topics, is almost all-inclusive, but what struck me is the fact that, of the eight topics listed in numerical order, seven are described, but one is completely redacted. And not just any one, but the very first one! The pages that refer to this topic are also completely white. >>>

Ed Haslam's comment: So I was sitting in a taxi cab with Gus Russo on Bourbon St. in New Orleans in late-January 1991. He was working on the PBS Frontline story about Lee Harvey Oswald. I had just provided him with the location of Guy Banister's missing files and identified the person who showed them to me (Ed Butler, Executive Director of INCA (the Information Council of the America's, a right-wing propoganda mill founder and financed by Dr. Alton Ochsner, former President of the American Cancer Society who had produced an audio recording (if not arranged same) of Lee Harvey Oswald in the Summer o f1963.))

Then Gus turned to me and said, "So, Ed, what are your really interested in?" "Monkey Viruses," I replied. Russo's head snapped and he stared at me. "Where do you go with that?" I asked. "AIDS," he said.

I guess that was just Gus's way of "filling in the blanks." I present the CIA docs at www.TheMonkeyVirus.com .

Ed Haslam

author of DR. MARY'S MONKEY

[Ron Ecker]

I'm thinking that one good reason for the CIA to (selectively) release these "family jewels" today is to promote the idea of how open, how changed, the agency is now. Look how bad we were back then! We admit it! Thank goodness we don't do such things today!

To be releasing these documents at this time, they must really be up to no good. Maybe 30 years or so from now they'll let us know what it is (or confirm what is already known by then), to let us know how the agency has changed since years like 2007.

[Dawn Meredith]

I'm thinking that one good reason for the CIA to (selectively) release these "family jewels" today is to promote the idea of how open, how changed, the agency is now. Look how bad we were back then! We admit it! Thank goodness we don't do such things today!

To be releasing these documents at this time, they must really be up to no good. Maybe 30 years or so from now they'll let us know what it is (or confirm what is already known by then), to let us know how the agency has changed since years like 2007.

Except the only "news" that is coming out is primarily stuff that came out via the Church Committee. CIA and Mafia plots to kill Castro. So yes it's VERY "selective". Relevent documents on the assassinations will come out only by accident after some enterprising researcher wades thru a lot of useless items for one jewell. (Which they thought had been destroyed).

Dawn