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Files on Illegal Spying Show C.I.A. Skeletons From Cold War
Key Excerpts from Article on Website of New York Times
Posted: July 6th, 2007
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/27/washington/27cia.html?ex=1...
Long-secret documents released Tuesday provide new details about how the Central Intelligence Agency illegally spied on Americans decades ago. Known inside the agency as the family jewels, the 702 pages of documents released Tuesday catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A. The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations in the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation in that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission which led to reforms of the nations intelligence agencies are not detailed in the papers. The 60-year-old agency has been under fire ... by critics [of] the secret prisons and harsh interrogation practices it has adopted since the Sept. 11 attacks. Some intelligence experts suggested ... that the release of the documents was intended to distract from the current controversies. And they and historians expressed disappointment that the documents were so heavily censored. Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive, the research group that filed the Freedom of Information request in 1992 that led to the documents becoming public, said he was initially underwhelmed by them because they contained little about the agencys foreign operations. But Mr. Blanton said what was striking was the scope of the C.I.As domestic spying efforts.
Note: The entire body of the CIA's "Family Jewels" documents have been posted online by the National Security Archives, and can be read by clicking here.
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