By JENNIFER C. KERR, Associated Press Writer
from YAHOO! NEWS

WASHINGTON - Little-known documents now being made public detail illegal and scandalous activities by the CIA more than 30 years ago: wiretappings of journalists, kidnappings, warrantless searches and more.

The documents provide a glimpse of nearly 700 pages of materials that the agency plans to declassify next week. A six-page summary memo that was declassified in 2000 and released by The National Security Archive at George Washington University on Thursday outlines 18 activities by the CIA that “presented legal questions” and were discussed with President Ford in 1975.

Among them:

_The “two-year physical confinement” in the mid-1960s of a Soviet defector.

_Assassination plots of foreign leaders, including Fidel Castro.

_CIA wiretapping in 1963 of two columnists, Robert Allen and Paul Scott, following a newspaper column in which national security information was disclosed. The wiretapping revealed calls from 12 senators and six representatives but did not indicate the source of the leak.

_The “personal surveillances” in 1972 of muckraking columnist Jack Anderson and staff members, including Les Whitten and Brit Hume. The surveillance involved watching the targets but no wiretapping. The memo said it followed a series of “tilt toward Pakistan” stories by Anderson.

_The personal surveillance of Washington Post reporter Mike Getler over three months beginning in late 1971. No specific stories are mentioned in the memo.

_CIA screening programs, beginning in the early 1950s and lasting until 1973, in which mail coming into the United States was reviewed and “in some cases opened” from the Soviet Union and China.

read more at YAHOO! NEWS