Our colleague Brian Bennett writes with a request for our enthusiastic commenters:
Hi Swamplanders,
The CIA just posted its “Family Jewels” file here
http://www.foia.cia.gov/
It’s about 700 pages. We’d like to enlist your eyeballs to pick out revelatory sections and post them on Swampland. (We all know how successful TPM readers were at pulling out juicy bits from the DOJ dump.) Most, if not all, of the scandals have been reported before, but these memos — requested by Director Schlesinger in 1973 — are expected to shed new light and context on some of the CIA’s most salacious secrets like spying on antiwar groups and journalists, illegal break-ins and testing drugs on unwitting U.S. citizens. There’s also 11,000 pages of Cold War-era CIA analysis of Sino-Soviet relations and internal politics posted — but it’s unclear how surprising those pages will be. Have a look and let us know what you find.
The full text of CIA director Michael Hayden’s speech explaining the release is here.
Best,
Brian
We’re obviously going to be going over these docs ourselves, but if there’s one thing we’ve learned from you, it’s that journalism is now a two-way street. We’ll highlight the best finds on the blog and, who knows, maybe we can get a story out of them as well. Thanks in advance if you decide to play along.
