*Former CIA Director William Colby dubbed the “Family Jewels” the “skeletons in the CIA’s closet.”*

The Middle East is on fire, the planet on the verge of world war, the Homeland Security director just ousted. It’d hard to pay attention to anything else. Still, if you want to know why news that the FBI has begun to turn over long-concealed “prohibited access” files to Congress might matter, just ask Seymour Hersh.

Fifty-two years ago, on December 21, 1974, the famed muckraker printed “Huge C.I.A. Operation Reported in U.S. Against Antiwar Forces, Other Dissidents In Nixon Years” in the New York Times. Hersh disclosed that “intelligence files on at least 10,000 American citizens were maintained by a special unit of the C.I.A.,” and spoke of “evidence of dozens of other illegal activities.” These misdeeds were part of a trove of dirty secrets in the CIA’s past that came to be known as the agency’s “Family Jewels.” Some sources Racket spoke with this week recalled the case in conjunction with news about the discovery of a cache of secret files at the FBI.

The “Family Jewels” story came to the surface after press reports of potential CIA involvement in the Watergate scandal. The news led then-director James Schlesinger to sign a May 1973 directive mandating that subordinates compile files on all material that “might be construed to be against the legislative charter of the agency.”

50 Years of Secrets: Why You Should Care About the FBI's 'Prohibited Access' Files