The Why Files: Operation Podcast - 603: The Real CIA Vol. 1 | 693 Pages of Forbidden Government Secrets

Episode Date: July 24, 2025

On June 25th, 2007, the CIA quietly released 693 pages of their most classified secrets. No announcement, no fanfare—just a document dump that revealed decades of illegal operations against American citizens. The Family Jewels documents exposed systematic violations that went far beyond what anyone imagined. Mind control experiments using LSD on unwitting subjects. Surveillance operations targeting 300,000 Americans who committed no crimes. Media manipulation programs that turned journalists into intelligence assets. Assassination plots approved at the highest levels of government. These weren't conspiracy theories—they were real operations, documented in the CIA's own words. The Family Jewels revealed how the agency designed to protect America became its greatest threat. What started as damage control after Watergate became the most comprehensive confession of government crimes in American history. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxY3KZ3pQ3o

On June 25, 2007, the CIA quietly released 693 pages of their darkest secrets to the website. No announcement, no press conference, just a document dump of operations so illegal they've been hidden since 1973. The CIA called this collection their family jewels. Assassination plots, mind control experiments, journalists on CIA payroll, surveillance of hundreds of thousands of Americans

who'd committed no crimes. These weren't conspiracy theories. These were real. Each page of the family jewels revealed operations approved at the highest levels, operations that violated every law meant to constrain the CIA. And taken together, they revealed something darker than isolated crimes. They told a story. The story of the family jewels is the story of the real CIA.

The story of the family jewels didn't start in 2007. It starts in 1973 when the walls started closing in on the CIA. On May 9th, James Schlesinger had been CIA director for only three months. And his timing couldn't have been worse. The Watergate break-in scandal was spreading. The five intruders were all connected to the CIA, some as officers, some as assets. The planners of the break-in were E. Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy. Hunt was former CIA.

Liddy was former FBI with a background in intelligence. Congress and the press were asking questions the CIA didn't want to answer. But the director had a problem. He didn't know what his own agency had done. He knew there were secrets buried that could destroy them if ever discovered, so he issued an order to every department head. Report any activity that may have violated the CIA's charter. This was supposed to be a routine investigation, a way to get the agency out of the headlines. The rumors were bad. He had no idea that the truth was much worse. One department admitted to opening mail between the U.S. and Soviet Union. 28 million letters over 20 years were illegally opened and scanned.

The Office of Security confessed to wiretapping American journalists who'd been asking too many questions. Every department submitted reports. Every report was worse than the last. There were disclosures of surveillance operations. Not against foreign spies, against Americans. Anyone who questioned authority was a CIA target. Some programs were classified secret, then top secret.

But operations classified eyes only were so secret, details couldn't be written down. They were labeled sensitive operation, details available orally only. Others had code names that revealed nothing. MH Chaos, HT Linguil, MK Often. Week after week, the secrets poured in. Programs everyone thought were conspiracy theories.

The binder was getting heavy. By summary, it was several inches thick, almost 700 pages of CIA misconduct. But these weren't occasional mistakes. They were approved, funded, and executed. In other words, decades of illegal CIA operation was official policy. This was a report that could destroy the agency.

And then it leaked, not from a spy, but from a journalist who believed in transparency. But he had no idea he was about to expose the biggest intelligence scandal in American history. And as soon as the CIA caught wind of his investigation, he became the agency's biggest threat and knew his target. The journalist who would expose it all was no stranger to government lies.

Seymour Hersh had already won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969 for exposing the Mai Lai Massacre, where American soldiers slaughtered hundreds of Vietnamese civilians. The Pentagon tried to bury that story. Hersh dragged it into the light. By December 1974, Hersh was at the New York Times, and he'd been hearing whispers from former CIA officers about domestic surveillance programs, programs that weren't supposed to exist. The CIA's charter was crystal clear.

No domestic operations, no spying on American citizens, period. But his sources were telling him the opposite, that the CIA was running a massive operation against Americans. On December 22nd, 1974, the Times ran Hirsch's story on the front page. The article detailed a massive intelligence operation with files on 10,000 American citizens, not foreign agents, not terrorists, Americans, anti-war activists, civil rights leaders, journalists,

even members of Congress. The backlash was instant. The public was outraged, and the press wouldn't let it go. The next morning, the Department of Justice announced an investigation, and CIA Director William Colby was summoned to Air Force One to brief President Ford personally. President Ford's solution was damage control. Control the narrative. Vice President Nelson Rockefeller would lead a commission to investigate. Quick, clean, controlled. The scandal would finally be contained.

But it backfired. The commission not only confirmed everything Hirsch reported, they found more. The CIA had conducted break-ins against American citizens, bugged their homes, opened their mail, tapped their phones, even tested biological weapons on Americans without their knowledge. The agency wasn't just violating its charter, it was breaking the law, and every target was an American citizen on American soil. The agency does monitor foreign communications. How do you define foreign communications? I think it is communications that go abroad or are abroad. Does it involve a United States citizen at one end. On some occasions that cannot be separated

from the traffic that is being monitored, I believe. These operations weren't the work of rogue agents. They were approved at the highest levels, by CIA directors, by the Pentagon, by former presidents and vice presidents. It turned out that most of these abuses really could be trailed back to the president and the NSC. and vice presidents. So this was really not a rogue president, I mean, rogue agency. This was in some respects a rogue presidency.

Congress knew they needed their own investigation. Senator Frank Church was chosen to lead what would become the most extensive investigation of intelligence activities ever conducted. And the Church committee had something the president's commission didn't, subpoena power. The power to force anyone involved to testify. No hiding behind national security. No, I can neither confirm nor deny.

Tell the truth or go to jail. For the first time in history, the CIA would have to reveal their covert operations under oath and on the record. And what they revealed shocked everyone because any American could be a target. And as the investigation continued, that list of American targets

kept getting longer and longer. The church committee's first major discovery was Operation Chaos, known by its cryptonym M.H. Chaos. Started in 1967 under President Johnson and expanded under Nixon. The mission was simple, find foreign influence in the anti-war movement, prove that Moscow or Beijing were behind the protests. They never found any foreign influence, not one case. The anti-war movement was made up of Americans, but they kept looking for communists

and the program kept growing. By 1973, Chaos had indexed 300,000 Americans in its computer system. Not suspected spies, not foreign agents, Americans exercising their First Amendment rights. College students, clergy, professors, journalists, anyone who questioned the Vietnam War was a potential target.

Richard Ober ran the operation. He worked under James Jesus Angleton, the CIA's counterintelligence chief. Angleton had built his own empire within the CIA. He was brilliant, paranoid, and convinced that enemies were everywhere. The CIA was designed to protect America from foreign threats, but Angleton had turned those weapons inward against his own citizens.

They used a sophisticated computer system to track everyone. It cross-referenced every name mentioned in every intelligence report. Feed in one name, get connections to dozens more, like a spider web expanding outward. 7200 Americans had dedicated files. Their mail was opened and their phones were tapped, without a warrant. Their trash was searched. CIA agents infiltrated their organizations, attended their meetings, recorded their conversations. The documents describe domestic spying, opening of private mail,

and the investigation of journalists. Agents watched former Washington Post reporter Michael Gettler for three months in 1971. They were watching who I was talking to. They took pictures of who I was having lunch with. They actually took pictures through the picture window of our home. CIA employees have nicknamed the documents, the family jewels. Over 1,000 organizations were monitored, not just protest groups.

The CIA watched Jewish organizations. The Israeli embassy was watched. When asked why, one CIA officer said they were looking for radical Jewish elements. American Jews practicing their faith, supporting Israel, were watched by their own government. And chaos wasn't alone. Mary Mack infiltrated protest groups around Washington, D.C.

Operation Resistance collected information on draft resistors. HT Lingual, an earlier operation, was still running. And that was opening and photographing mail between Americans and foreign countries. The CIA didn't just target protesters. It also watched members of Congress. Bella Absog from New York, Patsy Mink from Hawaii. A total of 14 members of Congress were on the CIA's watch list

for being vocal critics of the Vietnam War. The violations were systemic. Every person who spoke out against the war, every group that organized a protest, every publication that questioned policy, all of them ended up in the computer system. Names, addresses, associates, activities, everything catalogued and cross-referenced. They turned spying into a science. But sometimes watching isn't enough. Sometimes they needed boots on the ground. Sometimes direct action had to be used against American citizens. The CIA needed an agency willing to get their hands dirty,

and they found the perfect partner, the FBI. When it came to crushing Americans' First Amendment rights, the CIA and the FBI were perfect partners. The CIA surveilled dissent, and the FBI dismantled it. The program was called COINTELPRO, short for Counterintelligence Program. Officially it targeted domestic subversives. Unofficially it was a war on the First Amendment. Civil rights leaders were tracked. Activists were harassed.

Some were imprisoned. Some were killed. One of the FBI's favorite targets was Martin Luther King Jr. J. Edgar Hoover had been watching Dr. King since December 1955. The Montgomery bus boycott had just started. The young minister was making headlines.

Hoover ordered surveillance, and that surveillance would continue for the next 12 years, right up until Dr. King was assassinated in Memphis. The FBI didn't just tap his phones. They bugged his home, his offices, every hotel room he stayed in. They had agents follow him 24 hours a day. They knew where he was every minute,

who he talked to, what he said. They recorded everything. The FBI tried to prove he was a communist. They couldn't. They tried to link him to foreign agents. There was no evidence. What they found was a man who loved his country and believed in its founding principles,

justice, equality, the promises America made, but hadn't kept. Because I have a dream. That my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character. I have a dream today. And I consider Dr. Martin Luther King one of the greatest Americans who ever lived.

But greatness doesn't equal perfection. Dr. King struggled with infidelity. So J. Edgar Hoover got personal. On November 21, 1964, an unmarked package arrived at King's home. His wife Coretta opened it. Inside was a tape and a letter. The tape contained the hotel recordings. The letter was unsigned.

It called Dr. King names that I won't repeat here. But the final paragraph was clear. King, there is only one thing left for you to do. You know what it is. You have 34 days. 34 days. Dr. King was scheduled to receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 35 days. The letter was telling him to kill himself or the FBI would destroy him publicly.

The letter was likely written by William Sullivan, the FBI's assistant director. But the government has never admitted this. But the Church Committee found the evidence. A draft was in Sullivan's files. Cointel Pro conducted over 2,000 documented actions. They forged letters to create conflicts, planted negative stories in newspapers, sent people to prison on false charges, incited violence between groups, destroyed marriages, ruined careers, drove people to suicide.

The CIA watched, the FBI destroyed. But controlling people through force wasn't enough. They wanted to control people without realizing they were being manipulated. To do that, they deployed an even more powerful weapon. The media. There's a reason that protecting the press shows up right in the First Amendment. The founding fathers knew that democracy needs watchdogs. The press was supposed to hold the powerful accountable. Instead, the press became their mouthpiece.

The CIA had been manipulating journalists since the early 1950s. Now we know this as Operation Mockingbird, but there was no official name for it. Inside the agency, Frank Wisner, who ran covert operations, called it his mighty warletzer, a massive organ that would play any tune you wanted. It started in the early days of the Cold War under Alan Dulles. The CIA needed to influence public opinion against the Soviets, And major news organizations were more than happy to help. Publishers, editors, reporters. A few were patriots who thought they were serving their country. Some enjoyed playing spy. And some journalists had no agenda at all. They just, they just liked the money.

Do you have any people being paid by the CIA who are contributing to a major circulation American journal? We do have people who submit pieces to other two American journals. More than 400 American journalists had secretly carried out assignments for the CIA for 25 years and not small town papers. These are reporters at the New York Times, CBS, Time Magazine, Newsweek, The AP, Reuters, Washington Post, the biggest names in American media. Some journalists were full CIA employees using journalism as cover and the publishers knew. Arthur Hayes Salzberg of the New York Times, William Paley at CBS, they cooperated directly with the CIA.

When the agency needed a story planted, they'd make a call, the story would run. When they needed a story killed, another call, the story would go away. We are extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that CBS 4 News produces. But we are concerned about the trouble that's trying to make responsible I'm extremely proud of the quality, balanced journalism that CBS4 News produces. But we are concerned about the trouble of the country and they're responsible for one side of the story.

Plaguing our country. The New York Times gave CIA employees press credentials. They posed as reporters while conducting intelligence operations. Journalists spied on foreign leaders. They carried money to CIA assets. They provided their hotel rooms for secret meetings. When the CIA overthrew governments in Iran and Guatemala, the American press explained why it was necessary.

When the agency needed support for the Vietnam War, headlines appeared. The American people thought they were reading news. They were reading CIA propaganda. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish these same fake stories without checking facts first. The sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media. More alarming, some media outlets publish theseies, policies, they can't take the story

without checking facts first. Unfortunately, some members of the U.S. are using their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control exactly what people think. And this is extremely dangerous to our democracy. This is extremely dangerous to our democracy. The church committee exposed this collaboration. Bernstein documented it, but nothing really changed.

Because once you control the news, you control the narrative. You control what people think. And that power is too valuable to give up. But even total control of information has limits. To truly control a population, you need to control their minds directly. And one CIA scientist believed he'd found the way. Controlling the news wasn't enough. The CIA wanted to control minds directly.

Not through propaganda or manipulation. Through chemistry. Through torture. Through techniques that would break a person's mind so they could rebuild it. The program was called MKUltra, run by Sidney Gottlieb, the CIA's chief chemist. His colleagues called him the Black Sorcerer. From 1953 to 1973, Gottlieb had unlimited funds

and zero oversight. His mission, develop mind control techniques for the CIA. MKUltra wasn't one program. It was 149 sub-projects, 80 institutions were involved, 44 colleges and universities, 15 research foundations, 12 hospitals, 185 private researchers. Georgetown University Hospital got $375,000 to run a hospital safe house.

The CIA would bring subjects there, dose them with LSD, watch them for days, record everything. One mental patient was given LSD for 174 consecutive days. His name was never recorded. What happened to him was never documented. He was just one test subject among thousands. Between the years of 1957 and 1984, I became a pawn in the government scheme.

His ultimate goal was mind control and to create the perfect spy. All for the use of chemicals, radiation, drugs, hypnosis, electric shock, isolation in tubs of water, sleep deprivation, brainwashing, verbal, physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Operation Midnight Climax was an interesting subproject. The CIA set up brothels in San Francisco and New York, two-way mirrors in every room.

Prostitutes on CIA payroll would bring men back, slip LSD into their drinks, and CIA officers would watch from behind the mirrors. They photographed everything. The men never knew they'd been drugged. They went home to their families thinking they'd lost their minds. Dr. Ewan Cameron ran experiments at Allen Memorial Institute in Montreal. He called it de-patterning, erasing minds through torture. Patients were put in drug-induced comas for weeks, given electric shock at 30 times normal intensity, and forced to listen to recorded messages for 16 hours a day. Some victims forgot their families, they forgot their names, their entire lives were erased.

I was exploited unwittingly for nearly three decades of my life, and the only explanations given to me were that, quote, the end justifies the means, and, quote, I was serving my country in their bold effort to fight communism. I can only summarize my circumstances by saying they took an already abused seven-year-old child and compounded my suffering beyond belief. seven-year-old child and compounded my suffering beyond belief. The saddest part is I know for a fact that I was not alone. There were countless other children in my same situation and there was no one to help us. I know for a fact that I was not alone. Then there was Frank Olson, a scientist working in MKUltra. He expressed ethical concerns about the CIA's methods. He told a supervisor he wanted to resign. A few days later, Gottlieb's team slipped LSD into Olson's drink at a CIA retreat. On November 28, 1953, nine days after being dosed, Olson went through a 10th floor hotel

window. The CIA said he jumped. Suicide. Case closed. Olsen went through a 10th floor hotel window. The CIA said he jumped, suicide. Case closed. For 20 years, Gottlieb ran MK Ultra with very little oversight and a tremendous amount of power. But now Congress was asking questions. If MK Ultra got exposed, it would be a huge problem.

So Sidney Gottlieb came up with a solution. He ordered all MK Ultra records destroyed, thousands of documents, 20 years of experiments, into the solution. He ordered all MK Ultra records destroyed. Thousands of documents. 20 years of experiments into the fire. Well, most of them anyway. This is usually the part of the story where I debunk whatever myth or legend we've explored today, except everything in this episode is true. Sorry if it wasn't super fun, but I think these episodes are important to do from time to time.

And this Family Jewels episode is just one in a series. So before you ask, yes, I am uncomfortable doing this. What are the most problematic? Most problematic for me are probably the CIA ones. The one I did that ended with the Agent Orange kind of expose was kind of a dangerous one. It was the dark history of DARPA and all the bad stuff that DARPA has done since its founding. It's done some horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. And that was an episode I was afraid to release.

There's been a couple of those. horrible, horrible, horrible stuff. And that was an episode I was afraid to release. There's been a couple of those. You know, MKUltra is kind of afraid to because I named names. All of these CIA operations deserve their own episode. And I've covered some of them if you want more detail, links are below. And there's plenty more to cover. But there's one I stay away from, Operation Mockingbird. Mockingbird exposed how tight the media is with the intelligence community.

I haven't covered this because it's clearly still going on. Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms have already been exposed as either working with or being coerced by the FBI and other government agencies. This is fact. And if you follow TV news personalities closely, you'll see that a few are still on the CIA's payroll. I know their names, but I won't say them here. You'll know who I mean if you pay attention. Now chaos really did index 300,000 Americans.

That's also a fact. Fred Hampton was drugged by the FBI, murdered in his bed by local police, coordinated by the FBI. That's a fact. Frank Olsen didn't jump from that hotel window. He had blunt force trauma to his head before he fell. No cuts from window glass. His family received $750,000 in hush money.

The CIA admitted drugging him with LSD nine days before his death. But that's about it. There's a link below to the full story. The family jewels documents expose a lot of CIA secrets, but some mysteries are still unexplained. Item one in the family jewels is completely redacted. The whole thing is blacked out. And after everything else they revealed,

assassinations, mind control, surveillance, what could be worse? What could be in there? I'm not sure we'll ever find out. I'm not sure we even want to know. Sidney Gottlieb destroyed most MK Ultra records in 1973. We only know what survived because of budget files. How many subjects? How many people died?

What techniques actually worked? We'll never know. The CIA made sure of that. By the way, Gottlieb was never held accountable for any of it. Links below to more. And programs like these don't disappear. They evolve. They even get legalized.

After 9-11, Congress passed the Patriot Act. Suddenly, what got the CIA in trouble in the 1970s became standard procedure. Mass surveillance, legal. Collecting data on Americans without warrants, legal. With a FISA court rubber stamp. Those secret courts approved 99.97% of government surveillance requests. That's not oversight, that's theater.

Both parties voted for it. Both parties renewed it. Republicans championed it under Bush. Democrats expanded it under Obama. Trump reauthorized it. Biden extended it again. Every few years they pretend to debate it, then they quietly renew it. Because once government gets a power, it never gives it back.

What took Operation Chaos years to collect on 300,000 Americans? The NSA now collects on everyone in minutes. Phone records, email metadata, Internet searches, financial transactions. Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans? No, sir. millions or hundreds of millions of Americans. No, sir. Verizon offers its telephone customers what's called the Share Everything Plan. Well, the irony of that did not escape a lot of folks today when it was revealed

that Verizon has been sharing the phone records of millions with U.S. intelligence. And sources tell us this evening that surveillance extended to the Internet as well. The government is spying on even more of our online activities than anyone imagined. New leaks describe a program allowing the government to snoop into a wide range of activity most Americans believe should be protected. The National Security Agency is operating a massive database system that allows analysts to scour individuals' emails, Facebook chats, and internet browsing histories at will.

Exposing the CIA's family jewels should have been a cautionary tale, a warning. Instead, the intelligence community turned this into a series of tests. They tested the American people to see how many laws they would be allowed to break. They tested us to see what freedoms we would surrender. They tested us to see if we would hold anyone accountable. The CIA, FBI and our entire

intelligence apparatus has been testing us for 50 years. And for 50 years, we, the people, have failed every test. So what can we do? Probably nothing. The last person to openly say the CIA needed an overhaul was John F. Kennedy. How'd that work out?

President Kennedy died at 1 p.m. Central Standard Time. Thank you so much for hanging out with me today. My name is AJ. This has been a Y-Files Stripped episode. If you had fun or learned anything, I don't know how much fun we had, but if you learned anything, do me a favor, like, subscribe, comment, share. That stuff really helps us out. Like most topics we cover, today's is recommended by you.

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Did we get all the plugs? It feels like I've been talking for a long time. I think that's gonna do it. Until next time, be safe, be kind, know that you are appreciated. Yeah, I know. I know. Oh, oh, oh, yeah I played Polybius in Area 51 A secret code inside the Bible said I was I loved my UFOs and paranormal fun as well as music, so I'm singing like I should

But then another peach theory, see theory becomes the truth, my friends And it never ends, no it never ends I fear the crap cat and I got stuck inside Mel's hole With MKL truck, I'm being only too aware Did Stanley Kubrick fake the moon landing alone? On a film set, I was the shadow people there The Roswell aliens just fought the smiling man I'm told, and his name was cold I can't believe I'm dancing with the fish

And the fish are Thursday nights with AJ too And the world falls on her feet all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the world falls on come To have got the secret city underground Mysterious number stations, planets are full too Project Stargate and what the Dark Watchers found When a simulation comes to worry though The black night satellite at home me so I can't believe

I'm dancing with the fish Hector Fish on Thursday nights with AJ too And the one ball's up and free all through the night All I ever wanted was to just hear the truth So the one ball's up and repeat all through the night Picklefish on Thursday nights with AJG And the world falls on repeat all through the night Oh, I never wanted what you just hear

The truth, so the world falls on repeat all through the night Gertie loves to dance Gertie loves to dance on the dance floor Because she is a camel Camels love to dance on the dance floor Because she is a camel And camels love to dance When the feeling is right on wasting time Girl, you love to dance Girl, you love to dance Music