Open family jewels thread
Comment away on anything interesting contained in the CIA’s family jewels, released yesterday. In the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner sum up the document dump: Known inside the agency as the ?family jewels,? the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from ...
Comment away on anything interesting contained in the CIA's family jewels, released yesterday. In the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner sum up the document dump: Known inside the agency as the ?family jewels,? the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A. The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations in the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation in that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission ? which led to reforms of the nation?s intelligence agencies ? are not detailed in the papers.The Times has also set up a blog by intellligence experts -- including danieldrezner.com's Official Go-To Person for All Things Intelligent, Ms. Amy Zegart. Another contributor, Philip Taubman, concludes: Reading through the litany of C.I.A. domestic spying abuses and other questionable activities during the cold war years, including plots to assassinate foreign leaders, it?s hard not to wonder what the men and women of the C.I.A. (mostly men, in those days) were thinking as they wandered far afield from the C.I.A.?s own charter.
Comment away on anything interesting contained in the CIA’s family jewels, released yesterday. In the New York Times, Mark Mazzetti and Tim Weiner sum up the document dump:
Known inside the agency as the ?family jewels,? the 702 pages of documents catalog domestic wiretapping operations, failed assassination plots, mind-control experiments and spying on journalists from the early years of the C.I.A. The papers provide evidence of paranoia and occasional incompetence as the agency began a string of illegal spying operations in the 1960s and 1970s, often to hunt links between Communist governments and the domestic protests that roiled the nation in that period. Yet the long-awaited documents leave out a great deal. Large sections are censored, showing that the C.I.A. still cannot bring itself to expose all the skeletons in its closet. And many activities about overseas operations disclosed years ago by journalists, Congressional investigators and a presidential commission ? which led to reforms of the nation?s intelligence agencies ? are not detailed in the papers.
The Times has also set up a blog by intellligence experts — including danieldrezner.com’s Official Go-To Person for All Things Intelligent, Ms. Amy Zegart. Another contributor, Philip Taubman, concludes:
Reading through the litany of C.I.A. domestic spying abuses and other questionable activities during the cold war years, including plots to assassinate foreign leaders, it?s hard not to wonder what the men and women of the C.I.A. (mostly men, in those days) were thinking as they wandered far afield from the C.I.A.?s own charter.
Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner
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