Dirty Laundry and the CIA

This dandy was written by Josh Gerstein and published in the NY Post today.

This stuff happened 30 years ago. It's a good thing government no longer violates anyone's rights. Yeah, that's sarcasm dripping off of your computer screen.

The CIA is airing its dirty laundry from more than three decades ago by releasing the bulk of a key dossier on the agency's role in assassination attempts, kidnapping, and domestic surveillance efforts that may have been illegal or unauthorized.

The 702-page collection posted on the Web yesterday was the product of a 1973 call by the then director of central intelligence, James Schlesinger, for all agency employees to report any incident where officials might have violated the CIA's charter. The resulting compilation of alleged agency misdeeds was considered so sensitive that it was dubbed "the family jewels."

[...]

One action viewed as flatly illegal by some in the agency was the detention from 1964 to 1967 of a Russian defector, Yuri Nosenko. The records say he was kept at a safehouse in Clinton, Md., for more than a year before being transferred "to a specially constructed ‘jail' in a remote wooded area." CIA lawyers "became increasingly concerned about the illegality of the Agency's position," the documents indicate. Mr. Nosenko was eventually given better digs and a new identity.

Despite the misgivings among some at the CIA about wiretapping and physical surveillance aimed at journalists publishing classified information, the records show that some of the work proved quite successful. "Project Mockingbird," which involved snooping on two newspaper columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, was "particularly productive in identifying contacts of the newsmen, their method of operation, and many of their sources of information," an agency memo said. A dozen senators, six congressmen, 11 congressional aides, and White House officials were pegged as leakers.

Other targets of the CIA's anti-leak efforts included a Washington Post reporter, Michael Getler, and a prominent columnist, Jack Anderson. Some of Anderson's "leg men" were also followed, including Brit Hume, who is now a Fox News anchor.

[...]

Some of the family jewels are remaining under wraps, as are details such as the location of the makeshift jail set up for Mr. Nosenko. "Even though this is a historical set of documents, some of the information remains relevant and needs to be protected," a CIA spokesman, George Little, said.

The agency also released more than 10,000 pages of analytical reports yesterday on China, the Soviet Union, and relations between the two countries.