Thursday, June 21, 2007

Washington Post: CIA to Release Long Classified Records

The Washington Post has a major article on CIA abuse over the past 60 years, following the news that the CIA plans to release hundreds of documents next week. These documents apparently will fill in many gaps in our knowledge of CIA surveillance of U.S. protest groups, on CIA use of drug experimentation on unwitting victims, on break-ins, wiretapping, theft, and monitoring of journalists, congressmen, and much more. The story is written by Karen DeYoung and Walter Pincus.

A small preview:

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs....

In anticipation of the CIA's release, the National Security Archive at George Washington University yesterday published a separate set of documents from January 1975 detailing internal government deliberations of the abuses. Those documents portray a rising sense of panic within the administration of President Gerald R. Ford that what then-CIA Director William E. Colby called "skeletons" in the CIA's closet had begun to be revealed in news accounts.

Kissinger warned that if other operations were divulged, "blood will flow. For example, Robert Kennedy personally managed the operation on the assassination of [Cuban President Fidel] Castro"....

Worried that the disclosures could lead to criminal prosecutions, Kissinger added that "when the FBI has a hunting license into the CIA, this could end up worse for the country than Watergate," the scandal that led to the fall of the Nixon administration the previous year.

This should be a very interesting upcoming week. Meanwhile, AP is reporting that the U.S. is seriously considering closing down the Guantanamo gulag. Here's a link to that story, but it's from Yahoo News and those links seem to disappear after awhile. Sorry, only source I have right now.

To make up for it, here's a link to the National Security Archive, a wonderful site, who will be apparently hosting many of these released documents. They also have already the document where Kissinger warns Ford noted above. And this link goes to a PDF of the 6 page summary that supposedly reveals the CIA's top "skeltons", as of the mid-1970s. (God knows there are many new skeletons being born in the creepy basement rooms of 21st century Foggy Bottom.)

1 comment:

Valtin said...

Over at NION I made a comment on this at my cross-posting, which I wanted to repeat here. I wrote there that:

"In 'spook' lingo, It will be a "limited hang out".
I'm also suspicious... why now?

"I think there's some political maneuvering going on here. Someone wants someone else to look bad, or threaten them with revelations, e.g. we can let this out, so think what we could really do if we wanted to.

"Think about it. It should be big news that Robert Kennedy -- then the attorney general of the United States -- signed off on the assassination of a foreign leader. What other revelations are in store? What did the current or recent attorney general do? Who's going to squeal? Who's going to keep their mouth shut?

"In Washington, information is power."

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