CIA discloses past abuses
Chief says agency is beyond acts of 'very different era'
By Richard Willing
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON - For three decades, reports of rogue CIA operations from
plotting Fidel Castro's assassination to collecting files on U.S. citizens have
trickled into the public arena. Now the agency is acknowledging its past
illegal activities and revealing in startling detail how it crossed the line.
Tuesday's disclosure of the CIA's secrets from the 1950s until the early
'70s shows how the agency repeatedly violated its own charter. As the CIA now
endures criticism for its role in pre-Iraq war intelligence failures, it has
exposed past flaws by complying with a 15-year-old request to disclose those
activities.
One set of documents details a 1960 plot to poison Castro's food by
conspiring with organized-crime figures and an aide to tycoon Howard Hughes.
Gen. Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said the agency has learned "from
its history" and moved beyond the abuses detailed in the report. "We will find
in the press coverage of today's release reminders of some things the CIA
should not have done," Hayden said in a note to agency employees. "The
documents truly do provide a glimpse of a very different era and a very
different agency."
Releasing "unflattering" details of the CIA's history will increase
public trust in the agency, said Rep. Silvestre Reyes, D-Texas, chairman of the
House Intelligence Committee.
"This decision may upset some who worry that releasing these so-called
Family Jewels puts the 'good old days' in a negative light," Reyes said. "But
the truth is that the 'good old days' weren't always that good."
Critics say the modern CIA is too quick to distance itself from past
abuses. The documents provide an important historical record of the CIA's
"skeletons," said Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, a
watchdog group. The archive's 1992 Freedom of Information Act request prompted
the documents' release.
"The CIA cannot be allowed to simply walk away from its skeletons," he
said. "Especially when some of those skeletons, like warrantless wiretapping,
are alive and walking around today."
The documents, which contain many blank pages, provide little information
about current operations, says Ted Gup, author of Nation of Secrets, a 2007
book on government and private sector secrecy. "History welcomes disclosure,"
Gup said. "But what we as citizens need is something vastly more insightful."
CIA officials compiled the documents in 1973, after newspaper reports
connected the June 1972 Watergate break-in to former CIA officers E. Howard
Hunt and James McCord.
The report, a collection of various memorandums from CIA officials, also
shows how the agency:
.Collected files on 9,900 Americans active in the anti-Vietnam War
movement. In addition, the agency planted agents in peace groups in the 1960s
and sought information on radicals and black militants.
.Carried out "behavior modification" experiments on unwitting citizens,
including mind-altering drugs. Some test subjects were secretly given
hallucinogens such as LSD so agents could observe their reactions.
.Spied on columnist Jack Anderson and three of his researchers, including
Brit Hume, now a Fox television news anchor, in an attempt to learn their
sources.
.Planned to assassinate Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba and Rafael
Trujillo, leader of the Dominican Republic. Both men were killed in 1961. The
CIA had no role in Lumumba's murder but had a "faint connection" to Trujillo's
death, the report states.
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