In 1962, the CIA broke into the old French Embassy in Washington, D.C. and removed documents as part of a counterintelligence operation. President Kennedy was told about it. So was his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy. According to two FBI reports declassified in full on March 28, 2025, Robert Kennedy’s response, once briefed, was that the operation “was not to be called to the attention of the FBI unless FBI initiated inquiry.” The nation’s domestic law-enforcement agency was to stay in the dark about a break-in on its own soil unless it happened to ask.
Three Memos, One Author, Two Redaction Cycles
The record here consists of three FBI Intelligence Division memos, all written in 1975 by William Cregar: document 124-10271-10303, document 124-10185-10100, and document 124-10264-10191. They were drafted under the internal title “SENSTUDY 75,” a reference to the Church Committee, the Senate Select Committee to Study Intelligence Activities chaired by Senator Frank Church, which was then examining the CIA’s conduct. The memos were released without redaction on March 28, 2025, replacing partial versions the National Archives had put out in 2018 and 2022. Their subject was the CIA’s internal “Family Jewels” report, which Cregar was reviewing for material touching the Bureau.
The French Embassy, 1962
The memos state that President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and reportedly Secretary of State Dean Rusk were briefed on the French Embassy break-in. Robert Kennedy’s instruction that the FBI not be informed is recorded in two of the three memos in nearly identical language, though the memos do not say why this arrangement was chosen. Earlier public versions of these documents, from 2018 and 2022, had not identified the target of the 1962 break-in at all; only the 2025 release of the third memo names it as a French diplomatic establishment in Washington.
Three More Operations, Named in Passing
The same review lists other domestic surveillance against foreign missions. Operation WUDOOR was a joint CIA-FBI campaign against the Chilean Embassy, running from 1971 to 1973, that began with planted listening devices and was followed by a break-in the FBI report says was “presumably” meant to replace or remove them. Attorney General John Mitchell authorized the microphone installation on July 14, 1971, initially until October 8, 1971; coverage was later suspended in February 1972, reactivated in December 1972, and discontinued for good in February 1973. Operation SALVAGE was an FBI listening post in New York City aimed at the United Nations that the CIA took custody of in mid-1967 after FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover ordered it shut down; the FBI resumed control that fall. A separate FBI report from August 1975 states the Bureau also ran technical coverage of Israeli diplomatic premises, discontinued on October 16, 1972. None of the three operations gets more than a paragraph, and who authorized SALVAGE beyond Hoover’s closure order, or what prompted the end of the Israeli surveillance on that date, is not in the released text.
What the 1975 Review Actually Concluded
Cregar’s memos read, at first glance, like an investigation. They are not one. They were compiled so the Church Committee’s overseers would know which sections of the CIA’s Family Jewels report touched the FBI, whether through the Bureau’s knowledge of an operation, its participation, or its deliberate exclusion from being told. The memos catalogue those sections but render no verdict on lawfulness and refer no one for prosecution. This was bookkeeping for a Senate committee, not a closed case.
Five Names With Nothing Attached
The memos also mention five other codenames: MHDOZEN, MOHAWK, WUGRAVEL, ORKID, and SPROINTER. None comes with a target, date, or agency attribution in the released material. That gap is not, on its own, a sign these operations were larger or more sensitive than WUDOOR or SALVAGE, which are explained in some detail. Intelligence paperwork from this period is full of codenames whose explanatory paragraphs simply fell outside whatever pages were shared or declassified.
The Israeli Surveillance, Bounded Only at One End
The Israeli diplomatic surveillance has an end date, October 16, 1972, but no start date anywhere in the released memos, and no description of what the “technical coverage” involved. The same review is likewise silent about when SALVAGE began and about the full chain of who signed off on WUDOOR beyond Mitchell’s initial order. The Israeli case is not uniquely opaque; it is one more instance of a pattern running through this set of memos.
The 693 Pages Still Withheld
The Family Jewels report itself is 693 pages, compiled starting in May 1973 after CIA Director James Schlesinger ordered senior officers to report activities outside the Agency’s charter. The National Security Archive filed a Freedom of Information Act request for it in 1992 and received a copy, still partly redacted, on June 26, 2007. What the March 2025 release adds is Cregar’s index of that report, the FBI’s summary of which sections mention the Bureau, not the report itself. The operational detail behind the French Embassy break-in, WUDOOR, and the rest remains inside pages that are still blacked out.
Nixon’s Tapes and Kornbluh’s Argument
Two things sit outside the FBI memos entirely. Watergate investigators at one point pursued a theory that the same team later caught at the Democratic National Committee headquarters had also carried out the May 1972 Chilean Embassy break-in, and Nixon himself was recorded on his Oval Office taping system telling an aide the break-in was meant “as a cover,” calling it a “CIA cover.” Separately, National Security Archive analyst Peter Kornbluh has argued that since the JFK release already reveals what was in the Family Jewels sections concerning the FBI, there is no remaining reason to keep the rest of the 693 pages classified. Both are arguments made about the record, one from a taped conversation, one from an analyst’s public statement, neither a finding contained in the memos themselves, and the redacted pages they are arguing about have not moved.