A glimpse into the CIA's 'family jewels'

I KNEW I wasn't imagining it. I KNEW there was a reason to be paranoid. Today's release of CIA files proves it. Have things changed since then? Umm, I hate to be cynical, but I doubt it.

The Associated Press - The Central Intelligence Agency released hundreds of pages of internal reports Tuesday detailing assassination plots against foreign leaders like Fidel Castro and the secret testing of mind-and-behavior altering drugs like LSD on unwitting U.S. citizens.

The documents also provided information on tapping journalists' phones, spying on demonstrators who supported civil rights or opposed the Vietnam War, opening private mail between the United States and the Soviet Union or China, and breaking into the homes of former CIA employees and others.

Inside the Central Intelligence Agency, the documents were referred to as the "skeletons." But another name quickly caught on and stuck: "Family jewels."

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 Gerald 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, the FBI and other spy agencies and new permanent committees in Congress to oversee them....more