Family Jewels (CIA)
| Document Type | FOIA |
|---|---|
| File: | Download PDF |
The Family Jewels are a set of reports detailing illegal, inappropriate and otherwise sensitive activities conducted by the Central Intelligence Agency from 1959 to 1973.[1] William Colby, the CIA director who received the reports, dubbed them the "skeletons in the CIA's closet". Most of the documents were released on June 25, 2007, after more than three decades of secrecy. The non-governmental National Security Archive filed a request for the documents under the Freedom of Information Act fifteen years before their release.
Both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were briefed by CIA officials on an Agency counterintelligence operation to break into the French Embassy in Washington for the “removal of documents,” according to formerly Top Secret FBI reports declassified in full for the first time as part of the release of the Kennedy assassination papers and published today by the National Security Archive.
According to two of the FBI reports, “top United States officials, including President Kennedy, were briefed concerning this operation. Then Attorney General Robert Kennedy after being briefed stated the operation was not to be called to the attention of the FBI unless FBI initiated inquiry.” A third FBI document identified the target as “a French diplomatic establishment, Washington, D.C.”
The Top Secret reports dated June, July, and August, 1975, were drafted by the FBI’s Intelligence Division after the Bureau learned that the CIA had compiled the “Family Jewels”—a highly classified 693-page dossier on activities “where the CIA may have exceeded its mandate.” At the FBI’s request, the CIA provided 190 pages of the Family Jewels report that, according to the July memo, “contained many references to this Bureau, some of which dealt with operations of an extremely sensitive nature.”
The CIA compiled the “Family Jewels” volumes on the order of then director James Schlesinger in May 1973, as reports of CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal swirled and exposés on CIA illegal wiretaps, domestic spying, and other operations violating its legal mandate exploded into the press. “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on in the past, which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency,” Schlesinger wrote in a memorandum for all CIA employees. He also requested that former employees report on any “activities outside the CIA’s charter.”
The National Security Archive first filed a freedom of information petition for the declassification of the nearly 700-page compilation in 1992. After 15 years of appeals and legal pressures, the CIA finally delivered a copy to the Archive on June 26, 2007. Many pages remain redacted.
