JFK Papers Reveal CIA “Family Jewels” Spying Operations in United States

Washington, D.C., March 28, 2025 - Both John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, were briefed by CIA officials on an Agency counterintelligence operation to break into the French Embassy in Washington for the “removal of documents,” according to formerly Top Secret FBI reports declassified in full for the first time as part of the release of the Kennedy assassination papers and published today by the National Security Archive.

According to two of the FBI reports, “top United States officials, including President Kennedy, were briefed concerning this operation. Then Attorney General Robert Kennedy after being briefed stated the operation was not to be called to the attention of the FBI unless FBI initiated inquiry.” A third FBI document identified the target as “a French diplomatic establishment, Washington, D.C.”

The Top Secret reports dated June, July, and August, 1975, were drafted by the FBI’s Intelligence Division after the Bureau learned that the CIA had compiled the “Family Jewels”—a highly classified 693-page dossier on activities “where the CIA may have exceeded its mandate.” At the FBI’s request, the CIA provided 190 pages of the Family Jewels report that, according to the July memo, “contained many references to this Bureau, some of which dealt with operations of an extremely sensitive nature.”

In 1962, with the knowledge of President Kennedy, the CIA broke into the old French Embassy in Washington, D.C., and stole documents as part of a counterintelligence operation.

FBI analysts then drafted these highly classified reports describing the various pages of the Family Jewels compilation that revealed CIA-FBI collaborations. The subject title of the reports was “SENSTUDY 75,” a reference to the special Senate Select Committee to Study Intelligence Activities—more commonly known as the “Church Committee,” for its chairman, Senator Frank Church—that was investigating the secret history of both the CIA and FBI.

Operation WUDOOR

Among the FBI-CIA collaborations described in detail is “WUDOOR,” a joint espionage operation that targeted the Chilean Embassy in Washington after the inauguration of Socialist leader Salvador Allende. The FBI report refers to 15 pages in the original Family Jewels compilation which detailed a CIA-FBI penetration of the Embassy in 1971 to plant listening devices and a subsequent break-in of the Embassy, presumably to replace or remove the devices. The “Family Jewels” references, according to the FBI report, “refer to coverage [spying] of a foreign establishment in this country (later identified as Chilean Embassy) initiated during the period May 1971, to February 1973. Reference is also made to a press-reported burglary of this establishment in May, 1973, and this Bureau’s declination to investigate the burglary on the basis of lack of jurisdiction.”

“CIA’s code name for this operation” the FBI report stated, “is WUDOOR.”

A follow-up FBI evaluation of the CIA’s Family Jewels report, dated August 18, 1975, provided far more detailed revelations about the history of “the Chilean Project.”

In April 16, 1971, the report states, “CIA proposed technical penetration of the Chilean Embassy…to collect foreign intelligence data and to compromise classified encrypted diplomatic traffic.” The CIA planned to use a “contact”—presumably a mole inside the embassy—to plant the devices. When the FBI declined to support the espionage operation, Agency officials asked Attorney General John Mitchell to intervene. According to the report, on July 14, Mitchell “authorized activation of the microphone installation at the Embassy until 10/8/71. The CIA requested continuation as the expiration date approached.”

The “technical surveillance” operation was suspended in early February 1972 but was reactivated in December and remained activated until late February 1973. In May 1972, a break-in at the Chilean Embassy became public; at one point the investigators for the special Watergate Committee pursued the theory that the break-in had been committed by the same team of "plumbers" who broke into the Democratic National Committee offices. “[T]hat thing was a part of the burglars’ plan—as a cover,” Richard Nixon’s secret Oval office taping system recorded the president telling an aide. “Those [expletive] were trying to have a cover—or a CIA cover.”
 

Other Covert Operations: Israel, the UN

The penetration of the Chilean Embassy is one of many espionage operations against diplomatic posts referred in the August 1975 FBI report. “In addition to the ‘Chilean Project,’ the contents of [the Family Jewels] also refer to FBI technical coverage of diplomatic establishments of Israel,” according to the August FBI report. The July FBI report also noted that the CIA had provided technical assistance to FBI “coverage” of at least seven “foreign establishments.”

The FBI documents also revealed that in mid-1967, the CIA “maintained custodianship” of an FBI espionage post in New York City “targeted against the United Nations.” Codenamed “Operation SALVAGE,” the CIA effort was intended to sustain spying operations at the facility after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover had ordered it to be shut down. In the fall of 1967, according to the report, the FBI once again took over control of the espionage facility.

The documents also identify a myriad of other CIA covert operations along with their unique codenames, among them: “MHDOZEN,” “MOHAWK,” “WUGRAVEL,” “ORKID,” and “SPROINTER.” A CIA operation codenamed “PLMPLODESTAR” was “a CIA project to target assets against the ‘leftists and communist milieu in various parts of the world,” including the United States.
 

The Family Jewels

The CIA compiled the “Family Jewels” volumes on the order of then director James Schlesinger in May 1973, as reports of CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal swirled and exposés on CIA illegal wiretaps, domestic spying, and other operations violating its legal mandate exploded into the press. “I have ordered all senior operating officials of this agency to report to me immediately on any activities now going on, or that have gone on in the past, which might be construed to be outside the legislative charter of this Agency,” Schlesinger wrote in a memorandum for all CIA employees. He also requested that former employees report on any “activities outside the CIA’s charter.”

Cover page from the CIA's 693-page "Family Jewels" report (left) and redacted page on UN surveillance.

The National Security Archive first filed a freedom of information petition for the declassification of the nearly 700-page compilation in 1992. After 15 years of appeals and legal pressures, the CIA finally delivered a copy to the Archive on June 26, 2007. Many pages remain redacted.

“Now that the JFK papers have revealed key secrets still hidden in the Family Jewels collection,” noted Archive Senior Analyst Peter Kornbluh, “there is no reason all those pages cannot be declassified in full, as the JFK assassination records have been.”

“The JFK files,” Kornbluh said, “are a gift to history that just keeps on giving.”