Steven Harrell

Revealing the Family Jewels

Jul 5, 2007 News

Last week, the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency declassified over 693 pages of

Cold War era materials relating to CIA violations of the National Security Act of 1947. These materials involved the documentation of CIA actions that were done in violation of the CIA charter enacted by Congress in 1947. Their in-house code name for these files was ‘The Family Jewels’. I have reviewed half of the declassified materials, and will now report some of the juicy details to you. Some of the materials were downright boring, but other details of CIA operations were fascinating. Here are some of the most noteworthy:

1. Johnny Roselli.

In August of 1960, the Office of Security of the CIA was approached about a “sensitive mission”, requiring “gangster-type” action. Roselli was a mobster who owned and controlled all of the ice making machines on the Strip in Las Vegas. He was approached by the CIA, and he reported that he would be willing to recruit associates to journey to Cuba and to see about the assassination of Fidel Castro.

Roselli was told that businesses that lost property to nationalization in Cuba would be willing to put up $150,000.00 for Fidel Castro’s assassination. Roselli discussed how to accomplish the mission with his mob contacts. A shooting attempt was ruled out. It was later determined that a Cuban physician would be recruited, and some effort would be made to put a poison into Castro’s drink or his food. The CIA produced the poison pills, and sent them to the person that was detailed to bring them into Cuba.

The mission was scrubbed, though, after the failed CIA Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. It was never rescheduled.

On December 2, 1968, Johnny Roselli was convicted of conspiring to cheat members of the Frier’s Club of $400,000.00 in a rigged gin rummy game. After his appeals were exhausted, Roselli’s attorney asked for assistance from the CIA.

CIA Director Helms declined, and Roselli’s involvement with the CIA was leaked to columnist Jack Anderson in 1970. Jack Anderson ran two columns dated January 18, 1971, and February 22, 1971, which alleged that no less than six attempts were made on the life of Fidel Castro by the CIA.

2. Project Mockingbird.

Between March of 1963 and June of 1963, the CIA illegally tapped the telephones of two Washington D.C .based journalists. During the period under wiretap, the journalists received contact from the following persons:

Thirteen newsmen, twelve of whom were identified; twelve U.S. Senators, and six members of Congress, all identified; twenty one Congressional staff members, of whom eleven were identified. Sixteen government employees, including a staff member of the White House, the Vice President’s office, and an Assistant Attorney General, all of whom were identified by the CIA.

3. Yurly Ivanovich Nusenko.

Nusenko, an officer of the KGB, defected to the CIA in Geneva, Switzerland on February 4, 1964. He was brought to a safe house in Clinton, Maryland in April of 1964 where he was confined. Convinced that he was a double agent, the CIA confined and interrogated him there until August 13, 1965. He was then moved to a specially built “jail”, in a remote wooded area. He was interrogated in a hostile fashion for many months there, until the CIA ‘s attorneys and leadership decided that his “hostile” interrogations were illegal here in the U.S.

Nusenko was later moved to a safe house in Washington, where he cooperated fully with the CIA and the FBI, and where he conveyed valuable intelligence about KGB worldwide operations. He divorced his Russian wife, and later married an American woman. He continues to live here in the U.S.

4. Operation Celotex II. At the direction of the Director of Central Intelligence, surveillance was carried out at the residence and at the offices of columnist Jack Anderson, from February 15, 1972, to April 12, 1972. Anderson’s runners, or “leg-men”, Britt Hume, Leslie Whitten, and Joseph Speer, were also watched by CIA agents during this period. The purpose of the surveillance was to identify the sources for the investigative articles and columns written by Jack Anderson.

5. Hunt goes Hunting. One of the famous Watergate burglars, E. Howard Hunt, was formerly employed by the

CIA. On July 8, 1971, he was named security consultant at the White House. He was then detailed to work for the Republican Committee to Reelect the President (CREEP). In the Spring of 1972, he requested information from the CIA Office of Security on any lock pickers that might be retiring from the CIA during that period. The purpose of the information was to provide E. Howard Hunt with an available pool of trained and employable lock pickers that could work for Hunt at CREEP. (This was before the famous Watergate break in.) Information on lock pickers was sent to E. Howard Hunt from the Office of Security, and the contact with Howard Hunt was reported to the DCI later on October 4, 1972.

On June 17, 1972, E. Howard Hunt and James W. McCord (both former CIA employees), along with G. Gordon Liddy and others, were arrested after they broke into the Democratic National Committee Headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C.

After the Congressional Watergate hearings began, inter-office memos began to circulate within the CIA about the type and nature of assistance that E. Howard Hunt obtained from the CIA before the Watergate break-ins. The inquiry at the time began from the DCI, and went on