CIA Family Jewels - now open for viewing!

Next week, the CIA is declassifying a number of documents that have been referred to as the "Family Jewels" because they detail key operations that the agency wanted to keep buried, but an early sight of a 6 page summary document has been made available today here.

In 1973, the newly appointed Director demanded a report detailing all the skeletons that were in the CIA's cupboard so he had some idea as to what he was getting himself into. By the end of June, all 693 pages of that report will finally be declassified and there's been much media speculation today as to what might get revealed about assassination plots and the like.

(As background and for those of you outside the country, it's worth remembering that the CIA is prohibited from pursuing covert activities inside the USA against its citizenry, so much of what is supposed to be in this report relating to domestic operations goes against that law.)

Anyway, as you may imagine I was hoping for graphic reports of nefarious plots with exploding cigars, poisons, people being abducted to foreign countries and tortured (sound familiar?) etc. Alas no - or maybe not yet, at least. Castro-hunting aside, it all seems rather amateurish, like MI2.5 got the subcontract to handle this stuff and they put it in the in-tray of Mr. Bean.

In summary, it seems they opened a few letters going to Russia and Cuba, broke into a couple of apartments, and followed some people about for a bit. (Does anyone think this stuff isn't still going on??) But then I hit pay-dirt. Have a butchers at this ...

"Between 1967 and 1973, the CIA funded research in some institutions, apparently including academic institutions, on the general topic of behavioural modification." Cool! A secret plot to create a plague of zombies they could send to Moscow! It continues, "According to Colby, these activities included the participation - 'on an unwitting basis' - of some US citizens, who were not told of the true nature of the testing." Secret drug trials? Neurotoxins? Let's see. "The example given by Colby was that of a pole put in the middle of a sidewalk, with peoples' observations recorded as to which side of the pole they would walk."

The vicious bastards. How could they? Such unspeakable cruelty, even in the face of the obvious Red Menace, is hard to justify - let alone condone - were it practiced on enemy combatants at Gitmo, let alone innocent civilians wandering along the street in the late 1960s. I am sickened. I may have to move back to the UK in protest and in order to preserve my civil liberties.

I predict an Oliver Stone/Michael Moore film about this appearing at a cinema near you very soon.