CIA Releases 'Family Jewels,'WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday on assassination plots, secret drug testing and spying on Americans that triggered a scandal in the mid-1970s.
The documents detail assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro, the testing of mind- and behavior-altering drugs like LSD on unwitting citizens, wiretapping of U.S. journalists, spying on civil rights and anti-Vietnam war protesters, opening mail between the U.S. and the Soviet Union and China, break-ins at the homes of ex-CIA employees and others.
The 693 pages, mostly drawn from the memories of active CIA officers in 1973, were turned over at that time to three different investigative panels -- President Ford's Rockefeller Commission, the Senate's Church committee and the House's Pike committee. The panels spent years investigating and amplifying on these documents. And their public reports in the mid-1970s filled tens of thousands of pages. The scandal sullied the reputation of the intelligence community and led to new rules for the CIA, Federal Bureau of Investigation and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them.
