The_Info_Web/40 - EVENTS/INTELLIGENCE_SCANDALS/CIA Family Jewels.md

title	aliases	created	updated	category	tags	summary	start	location	relations
CIA Family Jewels	CIA Family Jewels Family Jewels Potential Flap Activities	2026-05-17	2026-10-12	Intelligence Scandal	Event CIA ChurchCommittee DomesticSurveillance AssassinationPlots MKULTRA Watergate 1970s	The CIA 'Family Jewels' was a 693-page internal compilation of potentially illegal activities assembled in May 1973 at James Schlesinger's direction and partly declassified in 2007, covering assassination plots, domestic surveillance and drug testing.	1973-05-09	Washington, D.C.	type with role start end fn investigated Jack Anderson CELOTEX II surveillance of Anderson and his assistants by the CIA Office of Security 1972-02-15 1972-04-12 2

The "Family Jewels" was an internal Central Intelligence Agency document - formally titled "Potential Flap Activities" - compiled in May 1973 at the direction of Director of Central Intelligence James Schlesinger, who had succeeded Richard Helms as DCI in February 1973 and was alarmed by revelations emerging from the Watergate scandal investigation about CIA involvement in domestic political operations. Schlesinger directed the CIA's deputy directors and senior officers to report to him any activities that had occurred or were currently underway that might be "outside the CIA's legislative charter." The resulting compilation ran to 693 pages.¹

Contents

The Family Jewels documented activities across several categories:

• Assassination plots against foreign leaders (Cuba's Fidel Castro multiple times; Patrice Lumumba of Congo; Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic; Ngo Dinh Diem of South Vietnam; General René Schneider of Chile)
• Operation CHAOS (MHCHAOS): domestic surveillance of American citizens; files on 7,200 Americans
• MAIL: illegal opening of first-class mail under the HTLINGUAL program, which had run since 1952
• MKULTRA-related drug testing programs, including administering LSD to unwitting subjects
• Domestic break-ins and wiretaps
• Testing of spy equipment on American citizens without consent
• Attempts to recruit the mafia for anti-Castro assassination operations

Schlesinger transmitted the document to his successor as DCI, William Colby, in September 1973. Colby retained the document and did not immediately disclose it to Congress. When the Church Committee was constituted in January 1975, Colby provided the Family Jewels as part of his policy of cooperation with the investigation, a decision that was deeply controversial within the CIA.¹

Disclosure and Publication

Colby's disclosure of the Family Jewels to the Church Committee in 1975 was part of what CIA traditionalists called the "Halloween Massacre" - the moment when Colby's approach to congressional oversight became apparent to the full intelligence community. President Ford fired Colby as DCI in November 1975 (and also fired Schlesinger as Secretary of Defense, in the same announcement), though Colby continued serving through the transition to his successor George H.W. Bush.

The Family Jewels was partially declassified and released by the CIA under then-DCI Michael Hayden on June 26, 2007. The National Security Archive posted the file on June 21, 2007 after Hayden announced that day that the agency was declassifying it, and wrote that the 702-page collection reached it on June 26, fifteen years after it filed a Freedom of Information Act request; Thomas S. Blanton called the release "the first voluntary CIA declassification of controversial material since George Tenet in 1998 reneged on the 1990s promises of greater openness at the Agency."² The released version remains redacted in substantial portions. The unredacted document can be accessed through the CIA's FOIA Reading Room: cia.gov/readingroom/collection/family-jewels.¹

Surveillance of Jack Anderson, 1972

The compilation records a surveillance codenamed CELOTEX II. From February 15 to April 12, 1972 the CIA Office of Security watched Jack Anderson and at various times his "legmen," Brit Hume, Les Whitten and Joseph Spear, at the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence. An observation post was maintained in the Statler Hilton hotel directly opposite Anderson's office, to attempt to determine Anderson's sources for highly classified Agency information appearing in his syndicated columns. The preceding item, CELOTEX I, covered Michael Getler of the Washington Post.²

The compilation also includes a memorandum of September 9, 1972, from Richard Helms to Henry Kissinger. It states that after noting Anderson had a continuing source for classified documents on narcotics, the Agency arranged a trap so that recipients of CIA Intelligence Memoranda on narcotics could be identified. The memorandum identifies a leak to the press as having come from the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.³

A separate memorandum in the compilation, signed by Ted Shackley of the Western Hemisphere Division, concerns a column by Anderson linking Howard Hunt to break-ins at Chilean diplomatic installations in Washington and New York. The memorandum states that the Agency knew of no foundation for the allegation, that any connection between ITT and the break-ins was conjectural, and that the column itself said as much.⁴

Footnotes

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1. CIA FOIA Reading Room, "The Family Jewels," cia.gov/readingroom/collection/family-jewels (released 2007). Church Committee, S. Rept. 94-755, April 26, 1976. Weiner, Tim. Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA. Doubleday, 2007, pp. 316-327. ↩︎

2. National Security Archive, Electronic Briefing Book No. 222, "The CIA's Family Jewels," posted June 21, 2007, updated June 26, 2007. https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm ↩︎

3. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, memorandum from Richard Helms to Henry Kissinger, September 9, 1972. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎

4. Central Intelligence Agency, "Family Jewels" compilation, memorandum on Anderson's column concerning ITT and Howard Hunt, 1973. https://archive.org/details/CIA-Family-Jewels ↩︎