Has the CIA actually changed its tactics?

Dubai: Following the decision to release the so-called "family jewels" by the United States' central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Michael Hayden, hundreds of pages of internal reports have been available to the public eye.

Records of assassination plots against foreign leaders, secret drug tests and even spying on American journalists and US citizens opposed to the Vietnam War by the CIA are all included in the recently declassified material.

The collection essentially amounts to a noteworthy watershed of confessions from an era many consider to be deeply troubled; that of the Cold War. It was a time marked with aggressive and often illegal CIA activities carried out during the US's unpopular war in Vietnam.

Accumulated in the early 1970s in response to a directive from then-CIA director James Schlesinger, "family jewels" were part of an internal investigation of potentially embarrassing or illegal activities. They were subsequently turned over to the US Congress and led to multiple investigations and comprehensive intelligence reforms.

One report, which has been picked up internationally, discusses the assassination plot of Cuban leader Fidel Castro. Although many portions of the document were blacked out, one can gather that then Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally managed an operation to try to assassinate Castro. CIA officials contacted a former FBI agent, who recruited two mobsters to kill the Communist leader in 1960. They gave them poison pills to use on Castro.

Other international targets included Congo independence leader Patrice Lumumba and Dominican Republic dictator Rafael Trujillo.

Another significant revelation out of these records is found in the information of the CIA testing mind-altering drugs (including LSD) on unsuspecting citizens. There are also stories of wiretapping of American journalists and break-ins at the homes of former CIA employees.

The release of these records by Hayden is part of what he characterised as an effort to close "an embarrassing chapter" in the agency's history. In his words, these records serve as "reminders of some of the things the CIA should not have done." He reckons the declassified documents provide "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency"

But some analysts are disputing this statement - referring to the intelligence tactics in President George W. Bush's campaign against terror as evidence that things have not changed - in terms of secret prisons, aggressive methods of interrogation and spying on Americans. If anything they say, the "family jewels" confirms that Americans have had a long history with such tactics.

The most obvious example is the Yuriy Nosenko matter, the alleged KGB double agent who was held in potential violation of kidnapping and other US laws and then detained and interrogated for several years by the CIA. The incident has its reflections in the US's current experience but on a massive scale - Guantanamo.

American citizens have also been held without charge or legal representation under Bush's administration. In addition, according to the Patriot Act, which was passed in 2001 after September 11, law enforcement agencies have been given massive access to telephone, e-mail, and banking records without the need for court orders.

The release of the "family jewels" marks the first time the CIA is publicly acknowledging responsibility for its illegal activities. Keeping that in mind, little of the information released will come as a surprise since much of it is already well-documented through media leaks.

BEHAVIOUR
Mind-altering drugs used in experiments

During the Cold War, the CIA was eager to examine the use of certain pharmaceutical drugs that could alter people's behaviour. They conducted drug experiments using drugs that American companies had rejected for their "unfavourable side effects".

The ones that appeared to be promising in laboratory tests were subsequently tested on volunteers. MK-ULTRA was the reference name to the CIA mind control research programme. LSD, which was in its experimental stage being developed in Switzerland, was brought in to see whether it could be used as a way to gain control over enemy agents. The experimentation of the drug, which is now widely recognised as a psychotic drug, resulted in the death of an American army doctor who was helping the CIA with their drug studies.