Court TV Host: Discuss the release of hundreds of pages of declassified CIA files, known informally as the Family Jewels, that detail the agency's illegal, questionable and embarrassing operations - including assassination plots and the surveillance of journalists. Join Malcolm Byrne, deputy director of The National Security Archive, the research institute at George Washington University which filed the freedom of information request, fifteen years ago, that led to the documents' release.

Court TV Host: If you want to look at the "family jewels" themselves, you can go to http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB222/index.htm

Court TV Host: Mr. Byrne, welcome, thanks for being our guest online today.

Malcolm Byrne: Hi, great to be here.

Question from kiara: Malcolm Byrne, why are these tidbits called family jewels? They sound more like dirty laundry.

Malcolm Byrne: Good question! Back in the 1970s these really were big secrets, the most sensitive the CIA had. It was one of the agency's senior people who called them the jewels. William Colby, who soon became head of the agency, preferred calling them the "skeletons in the closet."

Question from MaryB: Mr. Byrne, what kid of ramifications do you think the release of these documents will have, and why do you think it took so long for this to come out?

Malcolm Byrne: I don't think there will be long-term ramifications. Most everything that's here has long been known. The agency's current head, Gen. Michael Hayden, who released the materials, told his employees that it would probably not make the agency look very good but he hoped it would be clear that these were materials that described "a very different agency" than is currently the case. It always takes the CIA and certain other agencies a pretty long time to review and declassify their stuff. Part of the reason is that there's just no priority assigned anywhere in the U.S. government to declassifying materials. But of course there's also a long-standing culture in the intelligence community against letting go of their secrets. After all, that's what they're in the business of protecting. In this particular case, it's even more frustrating to wait 15 years -- I have a son who's 15 years old -- when you know that so little that's here is at all sensitive, in the classic national security sense.

Question from hippiechick: Why release all this info now?

Question from Rhette: So then why release them now if most everything has long been known, why call attention to our "Dirty Laundry?"

Malcolm Byrne: There are a couple theories: one is that Gen. Hayden was invited to speak last week to a convention of diplomatic historians and he probably didn't want to show up without some goodies. I think there's some truth to that. I think he also just wants to start with something of a clean sheet for his agency. There's a lot of sensitivity behind those high walls at Langley about their place of employment, a lot of loyalty, and it's important for Hayden to watch out for morale. If he can make the case that what's past is past and let's move forward, it's to the benefit of his staff and the agency itself. My own pet theory is that it may have something to do with the fact that my organization, the National Security Archive, gave the CIA its "Rosemary Award" last year, named after Rosemary Woods of Watergate fame. (She was Nixon's secretary who allegedly inadvertently erased 18-1/2 minutes of key Watergate tape.) One of the reasons they got the award was that they had many of the oldest still-pending Freedom of Information Act requests in their shop. One of them was this request. Maybe they wanted to redeem themselves!

Question from kiara: Malcolm Byrne, what was the big investigation into John Lennon?

Malcolm Byrne: John Lennon was a peace activist and a committed one. He was also a highly influential figure for "the kids" out there. Because the powers-that-be were very concerned about the mounting resistance to Vietnam, they looked into all kinds of possible sources of trouble. Lennon was no doubt a higher priority b/c of who he was.

Question from twointhehand: What do you - and what should we - find most shocking in the documents?

Malcolm Byrne: There ain't much that's terribly shocking in this day and age, sad to say. Assassination attempts and unwitting drug experiments have been known about for quite a while. Those are terrible things and deserve opprobrium, but if the question is what's shocking today about those events, there isn't much anymore. Still, it's fascinating to see in these kinds of documents how the CIA and other agencies like it function, and particularly how they respond to situations like the one they faced back then. What do I mean by that? Imagine the situation. You're a covert operative and since 1947 your agency has been allowed to go about its (sometimes dirty) business without so much as a frown from Congress. All of a sudden the papers are starting to get wind of what's been going on and the public and Congress are beginning to get unhappy about it all. Then one day, the upstart new director of your agency, a 44-year-old named James Schlesinger, who's only been on the job about three months, writes a memo demanding that everyone throughout the agency immediately inform him of all the dirty work they've been doing, all their deepest sins so that he doesn't have to read about them in the New York Times. For a professional spy, even for an ordinary government employee working at that agency, that's the time to hit the panic button. Do they do what they're told? Do they bare their sins -- which could easily get them into serious trouble? Moreover, do they do it for the sake of some guy who's already been cutting their budgets and making life difficult for them in other ways, and who won't be around for long anyway? (Schlesinger left a couple months later.) And I think the answer that you find in this document, as often as not, is no, they don't tell everything. I've talked to a couple reporters and other people who were active and working back then, and they believe there are other things that didn't make it into the report. One example that was given had to do with the extent of their surveillance against African-American demonstrators for civil rights. And of course there's nothing there about any of the many overseas activities CIA did in Iran, Guatemala and elsewhere -- because the order here had to do with what might be outside the agency's mandate, what might be a crime. And nobody inside thought any of that stuff counted.

Court TV Host: Related to that, I thought I'd mention the observation of one of my editors - he was struck by how matter-of-fact everything appeared to be - no one getting emotional at all, whether it's when they're discussing hiring mobster Johnnie Rosselli to assassinate Fidel Castro or when Roselli later tries to blackmail the CIA into helping him get out of legal problems by threatening to expose the CIA's assassination plan.

Malcolm Byrne: That's a very good observation. What struck me about the document after a while was the extent to which these memos which make up the "jewels" were exercises in bureaucratic CYA. These guys probably understood the significance of what they were reporting, but for one thing the covert ops people were all in the same club. For another, I can imagine they didn't want to make anything sound any more outrageous than necessary given the order they were following. It's almost funny to see some of the items in this connection. There is one note from the people who do translating of foreign press articles (a group known as FBIS), where they say very emphatically, our office had nothing to do with any of this! Then there's the comment by Sid Gottlieb, who at one time was head of the Technical Services Division -- the closest thing to "Q" in James Bond -- who told a colleague, the Director (Schlesinger) would be ill-advised to acknowledge any awareness of the programs in question.

Question from Babby: Mr. Byrne, do you think there are worse secrets still hidden?

Malcolm Byrne: I tend to think there wasn't anything much worse. How can you get much worse than assassinating people or slipping them psychotropic drugs without their knowing about it? The sense I got from a small number of recent conversations was really that the full extent of the activities was not covered, i.e. that there was probably more of some of the same things going on as opposed to even worse things happening.

Question from bert3930: How much material was blacked out in what you were given? If the agency says, we're not unblacking or releasing something, is that the end of it?

Malcolm Byrne: Great questions! I'd guess about 15% was blacked out, which isn't that bad in our experience with intelligence materials. Furthermore, we've spoken to a couple people with some knowledge of this who have said in their opinion what's been omitted is justified. As for whether to take any government agency's response as it is, in our experience you should judge case by case. If there seems to be a good rationale for them revisiting the issue you, as a FOIA requester, should absolutely give it a try. It doesn't always work by any means, but in some agencies like the State Dept. the process of filing an appeal automatically kicks the issue up to a higher level, and that surprisingly often yields better results. At bottom, you're dealing with often very reasonable people and making a reasonable argument can have an effect. We will almost certainly try to get at what's still being left out of this particular document. When you see that the very first item in the Office of Security section -- the one that comes even before the Castro assassination story!! -- is still blacked out, you have to wonder what's behind that.

Question from Babby: Can anyone submit a FOIA request? How do you know what to ask for?

Malcolm Byrne: Yes, anyone can. What to ask for? Do you want to know if an agency has records on you? File with that agency. Do you want to know what's going on with that military base in your area, say with their methods of disposing of toxic waste? How about government measures to deal with effects of certain medicines, or oversight of the meat packing industry, etc. All of those are topics you can file for with the right agencies. There's a whole series of ways to try to make your request more effective, like identifying the subject as specifically as possible (date, event, location, participants, etc.) For instance, we're interested in getting casualty figures in Iraq, but were told our request was too broad, so instead of asking for general figures for a period of about a year, we narrowed it to separate zones of fighting, like Fallujah, for a particular month. Again, remember who you're dealing with -- overworked staff who get no bump for taking time away from their regular duties to respond to your request. Anything you can do to make it easier to find the stuff is going to help. If you're reasonable, they'll often be very reasonable too (numerous bureaucratic horror stories notwithstanding).

Question from caby: After reading all these documents do you have an opinion as to how much our presidents knew about the operations CIA was involved in OR was it another Hoover-FBI situation?

Malcolm Byrne: Yes, they knew basically everything. Just about everything we've heard about or read about over the years was initially ordered by the White House. One of the myths of the 70s onwards was that the CIA was a rogue elephant. Congress even went to pains to write amendments to ensure that presidents were held accountable by having to sign orders for covert ops in writing. But the record shows that they knew all along -- maybe not every detail, but they were the driving force. I also don't mean to imply that the CIA was always limply complying. They had a number of very colorful characters with admirable initiative! But by and large they took their orders from above.

Question from hippiechick: Is the CIA now really different than it was then?

Malcolm Byrne: I was on a radio show yesterday with former acting director John McLaughlin whose main point was that this is a completely different agency and a completely different time. There's some truth to that, and I'd say (relating to the previous question) that there is a considerable amount of reluctance in the agency about carrying out covert ops of any kind these days -- b/c it always seems to be the CIA that pays for them in the end, they're a convenient whipping boy. But I think there's a larger point, again relating to the last question, and that is that the spotlight needs to be pointed at the top leadership, i.e. in the White House. Because every time a scandal happens and new laws are written to try to prevent those things from happening again, the people in power find a new way to get around the restrictions. Often that means finding another agency to do the work. Remember Iran-Contra? The Reagan administration turned to Ollie North and the NSC staff to run the ops that Congress had carefully and specifically ruled the CIA could not do. Nowadays, it's the Pentagon that's in charge of a lot of operations that would ordinarily require a presidential finding (a particular kind of presidential order) to authorize. Likewise, it's the NSA that's doing the wiretapping that CIA is prohibited from doing. So things have changed, but not really!

Court TV Host: Reluctance to get involved in covert operations? What about extraordinary renditions - the trial in Italy? Secret prisons?

Malcolm Byrne: Thanks for that question -- I don't take back what I said but you're absolutely right, it does not mean those kinds of things don't happen. But I guarantee that CIA officers and lawyers are working overtime to try to ensure there's no (or minimal) blowback on them.

Question from Queen_of-Chat: Malcolm, of what benefit is it to come out with all these facts, which present oir intelligence community in a negative light? Do you not think this is unnecessary and harmful to the United States in the eyes of the world?

Malcolm Byrne: There is a benefit to it coming out (for the CIA) to the extent that they can show they're interested in being more open and by extension more accountable. The CIA, as you know, has suffered a tremendous amount of negative publicity for its failures. The ramifications include calls by mainstream figures to abolish the organization. No CIA person wants that, so if they can boost their image -- and I really don't mean to say this is an entirely negative or cynical exercise on their part -- then they help their cause. On the question of harm in the rest of the world -- my view is that as bad as the public image of the CIA is here, it's far, far worse overseas. I doubt there's much that could make it worse, whereas if they show they're able to admit past mistakes and claim they're making amends, they see that as a positive.

Question from FRIEND: Do you think we'll find out the real truth behind the JFK assassination? Sorry, it was a predictable question.

Malcolm Byrne: Beats the hell out of me. But speaking as someone who spends their days poring over government documents I can say that it's almost always worth looking at, regardless of the subject. For instance, the voluminous JFK assassination records are a daunting creation, and they don't satisfy everyone by any stretch. But in those records are some absolutely fascinating materials about other things that were going on at the time, other activities by CIA, and other insights into how the U.S. government and the intelligence community really work. Forget the 007 image, but if you want to learn how your government really operates, you'll get some great insights from these kinds of records.

Court TV Host: Any closing thoughts?

Malcolm Byrne: This has been a lot of fun, and hopefully helpful to your audience. I'll close with two points. The first relates to Castro and the assassination plots. Our organization was part of a series of conferences in the 1980s and 1990s involving the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. I was able to participate in two conferences in Havana with Castro himself and Robert McNamara and other former U.S. officials. Fascinating experiences, to say the least. But one story that was mind-boggling had to do with a previous conference where a couple of the guys at CIA who were actually involved with the assassination plots attended and met with Castro. Far from being mortal enemies at that point, the Americans approached El Jefe, a former baseball player, of course, and presented him with a baseball which he signed for them. I guess time heals many wounds! The other thought, just to get back to the original topic, relates to the importance of studying these materials and our recent past. Many people may remember that one of Dick Cheney's first big jobs in government was as deputy chief of staff to President Gerald Ford. He was 34 years old at the time and his immediate boss was one Don Rumsfeld. That was precisely at the time when all of the scandals surrounding Watergate and Vietnam and CIA abuses were still in the air and Congress was reacting by enacting a law a week, practically, designed to rein in decades of presidential "excess" as many saw it. Cheney has since become infamous for his devotion to the idea of executive privilege, writ large, and for his abhorrence of interference from "activist" congresspeople. Those attitudes may not have been born in the 1970s but there's no question this was a formative period for him and others with that same attitude. So yet another example of how history and politics merge!

Court TV Host: Thank you very much for being our guest today.

Malcolm Byrne: Thank you, Paul, and many thanks for all the great questions.

Court TV Host: We hope you'll come back