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Dead cats, fouled nests, and the book of horrors - inside the CIA’s darkest hour
A pair of declassified memos from January 4, 1975 reveal just how contentious things were in the lead-up to the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee, with recent exposés having rocked the American public’s faith in the government, already strained by the still-fresh memories of Watergate, and undermined CIA’s legitimacy.
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The most interesting part of Timothy Leary’s FBI file is what isn’t in it
While the FBI file for Timothy Leary has several interesting pieces of information, what really stands out are some conspicuous - and revealing - absences.
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Kissinger and the CIA discussed ways to limit Congressional access to information regarding the Agency’s activities
Leaks from the government and even Congress itself are nothing new. As shown by a declassified memo describing a meeting between Henry Kissinger and CIA Director William Colby, these concerns were among the very ones facing the White House, the Rockefeller Commission and the Church Committee in the mid-1970s. Topics included NSA spying on Americans, selectively leaking less damaging info, and how much blame could be shifted to the FBI.
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As CIA Director, George Bush waffled on promise to not destroy records of Agency’s illegal activities
Declassified records recently unearthed in CREST show the CIA waffled on a promise to obey the law in not destroying records of Agency’s illegal activities and wrongdoing.
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When librarians stood up to the most powerful spy agency in the world
Between 1975 and 1976, Senator Frank Church carried out a televised campaign to reign in the U.S. intelligence community. The “Church Committee,“ as it was later known, held hundreds of hearings, published hundreds of pages of reports, and revealed some of the CIA, NSA, and FBI’s most sinister and illegal plots. Now, internal documents released in the recent CREST deluge reveal that even after his 1984 death, Frank Church was still trolling the CIA.
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Help sue the CIA for its list of favorite poisons
In November, we reported on the strange rejection received by J.M. Porup when he requested information on the poisons used by the Central Intelligence Agency for assassinations: They simply said that assassinations were illegal. Now, Porup is raising money to make the CIA give a real answer.
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Since assassination is illegal, the CIA says it has no records on how it would do it
Last year, MuckRock user Jens Porup filed a FOIA with the CIA for a list of all poisons used in covert assassinations. Although Porup could have reasonably expected this request to be rejected under about a half-dozen exemptions, the Agency still managed to throw him a curveball: they simply responded that assassinations were illegal.