The CIA is to declassify secret records detailing operations including illegal domestic surveillance, assassination plots and kidnapping, undertaken from the 1950s to the early 1970s, at the height of the cold war and the Vietnam conflict.
The records were compiled in 1973 at the behest of the then CIA director, James Schlesinger, and collected in a 693-page dossier known as the "family jewels". Although some of its contents have been leaked, the CIA has refused until now to put the full dossier in the public domain.

Domestic operations include the illegal detention and interrogation of a Russian defector, the wiretapping of columnists Robert Allen and Paul Scott, and the surveillance of other journalists including the late Jack Anderson. Several illegal break-ins are also listed.

In the minutes, Colby says some US citizens had been subjected to "unwitting" CIA drug experiments to induce "behaviour modification". The CIA also illegally amassed 9,900 files on Americans involved in anti-war activities.

The minutes state that the CIA "plotted the assassination of some foreign leaders including [Fidel] Castro, [Patrice] Lumumba [Democratic Republic of Congo] and [Rafael] Trujillo [Dominican Republic]." They go on: "With respect to Trujillo's assassination on May 30 1961, the CIA had 'no active part' but had a 'faint connection' with the groups that in fact did it."

General Michael Hayden, the CIA director, said they offered a "glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency".