With the announcement that the CIA is declassifying their Family Jewels, it is time to answer a few questions.
What are the CIA’s Family Jewels and how did they come into existence? What does it mean for today?
On February 2, 1973, William R. Schlesinger became the Director of Central Intelligence, replacing Richard Helms. His first words to the staff were reportedly, “I’m here to make sure you don’t screw Richard Nixon”. Nixon was just beginning his second-term in office, but the Watergate investigation was heating up.
Schlesinger was assisted in his new job by a longtime covert operator named William Colby. Together they performed a massive purge of the Agency, including the clandestine branch. That is a whole story unto itself. For the purposes of this narrative, the important thing is that Schlesinger wanted to make sure that he knew everything there was to know about the CIA’s role in Watergate. And William Colby and Deputy DCI Vernon Walters briefed him, assuring him they had provided all the information. But then something happened.
On April 15, 1973, John Dean told the federal prosecutors about the burglary of Dr. Lewis Fielding’s office in Los Angeles engineered by E. Howard Hunt, with the CIA’s assistance, and the following day Hunt confirmed the story when he testified before the Grand Jury.
Colby and Vernon Walters, the deputy DCI, had both assured Schlesinger that he knew everything there was to know about the CIA’s involvement in Watergate. Now Schlesinger discovered that Hunt had committed a burglary with material aid from the CIA. Schlesinger told Colby he was going to turn the CIA upside down and “fire everyone if necessary,” but he intended to learn everything the CIA had done that might blindside him in the future. No more surprises!
Colby had a plan ready to deal with this problem. He suggested that Schlesinger issue a directive to every CIA employee instructing him to come forward with anything the CIA might have done that exceeded the limits of the Agency’s charter. Schlesinger thought this a good idea. Colby wrote the order, Schlesinger signed it, and copies were distributed within the CIA on May 9, 1973, the same day on which Nixon moved Schlesinger to the Department of Defense, and appointed Colby as the new director of central intelligence.
[In the interest of accuracy, Schlesinger didn’t actually leave for the Pentagon until July 2nd, 1973 (it is the shortest stint as DCI in history).]
CIA officers came forward and detailed crime after crime. Assassinations, kidnapping, experimentation on unwitting citizens, infiltration of leftist groups, warrantless wiretapping and bugs, mail opening, burglary, and more. Their information was compiled into a 693-page report. This report was obviously highly sensitive.
William Colby them did something highly suspect. As the new declassifications show, DCI Colby did not brief President Ford on the Family Jewels until January 3, 1975. But he did brief someone else. This is from a deleted CIA history of the era, found in Google’s cache. Close followers of intelligence matters are familiar with the [Senate] Church Committee and the [House] Pike Committee, that investigated abuses in the 1970’s. But few remember the Nedzi Committee. That is because it was short-lived.
On 19 February 1975, the House, by a vote of 286 to 120, passed House Resolution 138 creating a House Select Committee on Intelligence, the Nedzi Committee.
Rep. Lucien Nedzi was the Chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. That was the closest thing Congress had back then to today’s Intelligence Committees. Nedzi was a strong supporter of the CIA and he didn’t insist on much oversight at all.
CIA officials found Nedzi to be a solid choice, but other Democrats in the House and on the committee had major reservations. Harrington especially felt Nedzi had been “co-opted” by his service as chairman of the subcommittee on intelligence. He asked, “How could he investigate himself?”
That question would answer itself shortly.
Nedzi tried to set an agenda for the committee’s investigations. He believed that the committee should focus on the Agency’s “family jewels”– the list of abuses and possible illegal activities the Agency itself compiled in the early 1970s. On 5 June 1975, however, before the committee could meet to discuss its program, The New York Times published details of the “family jewels” and revealed that Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) William Colby had briefed Nedzi about them in 1973, when Nedzi was chairman of the Armed Services Subcommittee on Intelligence. 9 His fellow Democrats, led by Harrington, revolted. Nedzi resigned as chairman of the committee on 12 June 1975.
Do you see the problem? William Colby had given up the Family Jewels to a Democratic congressperson in 1973 and, yet, he only briefed President Ford about them in January 1975. The fact that the administration had lost control of the 693-page document meant they were limited in how they could respond.
By this time [June 1975] the Ford administration had some familiar characters. Donald Rumsfeld was still Ford’s chief of staff but would replace Schlesinger as Secretary of Defense on November 20th. Dick Cheney was Assistant to the President and would replace Rumsfeld as chief of staff when he moved to the Pentagon. George Herbert Walker Bush was ambassador to China, but would replace Colby as DCI on January 30, 1976. Henry Kissinger was the Secretary of State.
