The revelation that Richard Nixon had wanted to use the CIA to try to obstruct a federal investigation into the Watergate burglary in 1972 triggered a series of investigations into the agency’s activities over the preceding twenty years. The resulting reports, known as the ‘Family Jewels’, identified a damning litany of illegal actions far outside the CIA’s charter, including wiretapping of journalists, burglaries, assassination plots, experimentation on humans, collusion with the Mafia and systematic domestic surveillance of civilians.
