[link|http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/21/AR2007062102434.html?referrer=email|Washington Post]

The CIA will declassify hundreds of pages of long-secret records detailing some of the intelligence agency's worst illegal abuses -- the so-called "family jewels" documenting a quarter-century of overseas assassination attempts, domestic spying, kidnapping and infiltration of leftist groups from the 1950s to the 1970s, CIA Director Michael V. Hayden said yesterday.

The documents, to be publicly released next week, also include accounts of break-ins and theft, the agency's opening of private mail to and from China and the Soviet Union, wiretaps and surveillance of journalists, and a series of "unwitting" tests on U.S. civilians, including the use of drugs.

These are the infamous "family jewels" documents put together by CIA Director James R. Schlesinger in 1973. They where an attempt to chart everything the CIA had done that was illegal.

Most of it should be rehashes of stuff that has come out already, but there are sure to be details in the documentation that have not been seen before. It will be interesting to see just how much they release.

Jay