CIA wiretapped scribes and dissidents: Report

The latest revelations of the surveillance and operational machinations of the Central Intelligence Agency has offered a stunning glimpse into the agency functioning, according to latest documents.

The latest documents obtained by the National Archives of George Washington University on "Family Jewels" showing that the agency repeatedly violated its own charter, wire-tapping journalists and dissidents.

According to the Archives' listings, the "best" of the "Family Jewels" would include: Journalists surveillance; Covert mail opening at JFK airport; Watergate burglar; former CIA operative E. Howard Hunt of Watergate fame requesting a lock picker; investigating foreign support for domestic US dissent; Plan to poison Congo leader Patrice Lumumba; John Lennon funding anti-war activists; and a CIA counter-intelligence official James J Angleton and issue of training foreign police in bomb-making, sabotage.

The peek into the functioning of the CIA started flowing since last week when documents surfaced detailing activities by the agency more than three decades ago that included wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more.

The 700 odd page of materials that has been made public includes a six-page summary memo declassified in 2000 and released by the National Security Archive at George Washington University that essentially outlined 18 activities by the CIA that "presented legal questions" and were discussed with President Ford in 1975.