Acting DCI Schlesinger Orders CIA "Family Jewels" Internal Inventory of Illegal Activities

Opening

CIA Director James Schlesinger issues a memorandum on May 9, 1973 directing every CIA employee to report any agency activities that might exceed the CIA’s statutory charter. The order produces a 693-page internal compilation known as the “Family Jewels” — documenting domestic surveillance, assassination plots against foreign leaders, mail-opening, drug-testing on unwitting U.S. citizens, and other operations in direct violation of the 1947 National Security Act’s prohibition on internal security functions. The document is kept internal for 18 months until leaked to Seymour Hersh in December 1974, catalyzing the Church and Pike committee investigations.

What Happened / Key Facts

Context: Schlesinger assumed DCI office February 2, 1973, following Richard Helms’s departure. Schlesinger’s brief 6-month tenure coincided with early Watergate revelations including the June 1972 “smoking gun” meeting (1972-06-23–smoking-gun-tape-nixon-orders-fbi-obstruction) in which Nixon ordered CIA assistance in obstructing the FBI Watergate investigation — an episode that exposed CIA complicity in domestic political operations.

Schlesinger’s May 9 memo ordered:

• “Any activities … which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter” to be reported to him immediately.
• Individual employees were given direct reporting channels, bypassing their immediate supervisors when necessary.
• Classification TOP SECRET, restricted distribution.

The resulting “Family Jewels” compilation included:

• Plots to assassinate Fidel Castro (1960-1965) using Mafia intermediaries.
• Plots against Patrice Lumumba (Congo, 1960-1961).
• Plots against Rafael Trujillo (Dominican Republic, 1960-1961).
• Project MKULTRA and subordinate programs (1953-1973) — chemical/biological experimentation on unwitting U.S. and Canadian subjects.
• Operation CHAOS (1967-1974) — domestic political surveillance.
• HTLINGUAL mail-opening (1952-1973) — CIA opened 215,000 pieces of first-class mail.
• Surveillance of U.S. journalists (1963, 1971-1972) — Jack Anderson and Victor Marchetti among those surveilled on U.S. soil.
• Assistance to domestic police departments including Nixon’s “Plumbers” unit, to whom CIA had provided technical support and false identity documents.

Colby — promoted to DCI September 4, 1973, after Schlesinger moved to Defense — inherited the Family Jewels document. In January 1975 Colby provides briefings to the Rockefeller Commission and Church Committee that reveal substantial portions.

Why This Event Matters

The Family Jewels inventory is the single most consequential internal intelligence document in U.S. history:

• Documented admission of programmatic illegality. The document’s existence — compiled by CIA’s own employees at their Director’s explicit order — removed any deniable space for defenders of the status quo. The agency had documented, internally, that it had been violating its statutory charter for two decades.
• Catalyst for statutory reform. Release portions to Church Committee and Rockefeller Commission led directly to the 1978-10-25–foreign-intelligence-surveillance-act-signed, the permanent Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (May 1976), the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence (July 1977), and the executive-order assassination ban (1976-02-18–ford-executive-order-11905-assassination-ban-intelligence-reform).
• Pattern-setter for post-9/11 internal-review documents. CIA’s 2004 Office of Inspector General report on interrogation (partially released 2009) and the 2014 Senate Intelligence Committee Torture Report follow the Family Jewels template — internal compilation of programmatic abuses, eventual partial disclosure, limited structural reform.

The full 693-page Family Jewels document remained classified until June 25, 2007, when CIA released a heavily redacted version. Many references remain redacted.

Broader Context

The document surfaced publicly via Seymour Hersh’s December 22, 1974 New York Times front-page expose (1974-12-22–hersh-nyt-cia-domestic-surveillance-expose). Colby’s decision to cooperate with Hersh, and to brief the Ford administration and Congress fully, distinguished him from Helms (who faced perjury charges in 1977 for denying under oath operations the Family Jewels documented).

Research Gaps

• The 2007-released Family Jewels version contains approximately 30% redaction; full text still classified in sections

Related Entries

• 1947-09-18–cia-founded-national-security-act-implementation
• 1953-04-13–cia-mkultra-project-inception
• 1967-08-15–cia-operation-chaos-begins-domestic-surveillance
• 1972-06-23–smoking-gun-tape-nixon-orders-fbi-obstruction
• 1974-12-22–hersh-nyt-cia-domestic-surveillance-expose
• 1975-01-27–church-committee-begins
• 1975-04-26–church-committee-cia-operations