The story
In May 1973, with the Watergate scandal touching the CIA, Director James Schlesinger ordered every employee to report any past or present activity that might fall outside the agency's charter. The answers were gathered into a 693 page compilation that insiders called the Family Jewels. It listed assassination plots against foreign leaders, the domestic spying of Operation CHAOS, wiretaps on journalists, the opening of Americans' mail, the confinement of a Soviet defector for years and drug testing on unwitting subjects.
On December 22, 1974, Seymour Hersh reported in The New York Times that the CIA had conducted a massive illegal domestic intelligence operation against the antiwar movement. The story led President Gerald Ford to create the Rockefeller Commission and pushed the Senate and House to set up the Church and Pike Committees in 1975. Director William Colby briefed investigators on much of the list, angering colleagues. The full Family Jewels document stayed secret until the CIA released it, with redactions, in June 2007 after Freedom of Information requests by the National Security Archive.
Why it mattered
- The Family Jewels story launched the Rockefeller Commission and the Church and Pike Committees of 1975.
- Those investigations produced permanent congressional intelligence committees and the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.
- The list remains the CIA's own index of its Cold War abuses, used by historians and investigators ever since.
Sources
- The CIA's Family Jewels National Security Archive
- Editorial Note (FRUS 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, part 2, doc. 17) Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- Memorandum of Conversation, January 17, 1975 (FRUS 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, part 2, doc. 29) Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- The Pike Committee Investigations and the CIA CIA Studies in Intelligence
Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made
Claims checked against the record
Consensus: The CIA released the Family Jewels in 2007, confirming the internal list of questionable activities that Hersh reported in 1974. The document is the agency's own record and its contents are not disputed, though parts remain redacted.
- The CIA's Family Jewels National Security Archive
- Editorial Note (FRUS 1969-1976, vol. XXXVIII, part 2, doc. 17) Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
- The Pike Committee Investigations and the CIA CIA Studies in Intelligence
- The CIA's Family Jewels National Security Archive
- Destruction of Drug and Toxin Related Files CIA Reading Room
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