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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.


REPORT: CIA used mobsters in plot to kill Castro

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."

FIND MORE STORIES IN: Thomas | Central Intelligence Agency | Central Intelligence Agency | CIA Director | CASTRO | National security | James Mccord
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."


MORE: Some other examples of CIA misconduct
ON THE WEB: Click through newly-released CIA documents

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 a 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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does anybody feel that the CIA has not revealed ENOUGH?

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Originally posted by 00Q:
Good point Greensandman. I never looked at it that way...

====Truman erred by accepting the Dulle minded boy's reccommendation to create an agency to hide Werhardt Galen's Nazi espionage establishment to continue the world-wide uniform-less terror operations delegated to Donavan during a war with a Congress-recognized enemy.
Military Intelligence organs then and now are/were capable of sensing dangers to US. The "Company" has been exposed as more responsive to economic/political interests of Economic and Political interests.=========

---

Shoe,

Yeah John is supposedly very sick. I wish somebody would have spotted that before making him Supreme for life! Don't they do physical exams in those Senate confirms? (just joking)

=======Did my best to point out to the JUD. Committee that he had failed to let Reagan know(as his White House Counsel) the effect of Executive Order 12333 that allowed the CIA to work with drug criminals. Maybe he was out sick that week.============

So how do you like this... The new guard on the 7th floor is now trying to lay blame on George Tenet for the failure to spot 9/11 and the failure to do anything about UBL... WTF!!! I guess Michael F. Scheuer - Chief, 1996 to 1999, of the Bin Laden Issue Station (aka "Alec Station"), the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counter-terrorist Center was just fictitious???
============You've picked deeper into that scab than I. Haven't read Tenet yet. I wrote a long post on stuff US will not likely see in it. Like his visit to the Senate Gallery on the day Senate failed to excommunicate Bill. He won't mention that he was there to make it obvious to 5 Republican senators of they voted yes Bill would have Tenet expose BushI's complicity in the drugs on non-lethal-aid transports. etc.
And of course say noting about the Taliban eradicating poppys and the Northern Alliance(Drug Lords) being the world's supplier now.======

Is this pay-back for his new book? The new DCIA says no. Yeah right... I'm glad George responded to them. Went something like "GET F/***ED YOU NECON A**HOLES!" or something like that. I may be paraphrasing a bit...
=========George responded? Where/when?-------
-00Q-

PS - Hey Shoe you still watching your 6 these days? Miss our loggerhea-laden convos. :-)

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Originally posted by LISAJACKSON:
I haven't heard any thing about this on the "outside" of the us to confirm a public statement .

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Originally posted by TomTreftsUVC:
THE CIA : 21 Topics :
http://xsorbit27.com/users5/unifiedveteranscoalition/index.php/board,417.0

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Originally posted by johnshoemaker30:
Ok 00q, just noted the site. Jeez, yeah, I'll play there a bit. Remember when you advised me to not talk so dirty cause some old agents simply wanted to relax on the internet a bit? I agreed.

The past abuses have been by the Executive who abused his powers.