After 30 years festering in CIA archives and 15 years after a Freedom of Information Act request, the CIA has finally revealed its "Family Jewels."

The 702-page document showcases the misdeeds of the CIA at a time when its chicanery was particularly egregious: the 1950s to 1973. Skeletons now out of the closet include the confinement of a Russian defector, wiretappings, break-ins, civilian drug testing, surveillance of a Washington Post reporter, mail tampering, and forged documents. The report was compiled in '73, when the director of Central Intelligence sat down with sweaty palmed employees and asked them to report anything they thought was inconsistent with the Agency's charter.

It's almost better than the classic "Cranks, Nuts, and Screwballs," which suggests tactics in dealing with people who call as volunteer hypnotists or to offer help disposing of bodies in home meat grinders.

A closer glimpse at one of the many dramas in the "Family Jewels" after the jump ...

• 1960: CIA plot hatched to assassinate Fidel Castro, "requiring gangster type action." Mob contacts are developed by two top CIA officials, the director of Plans, and the Office of Security, and knowledge of the plot was limited to a handful of people. The plan was to use mob boss Sam Giancana's contacts in Cuba to reach out to disaffected Cubans with access to Castro, who would then place slow-acting poison pills in Castro's food. The plot originated at CIA and used a former FBI agent with mob contacts claiming to be acting on behalf of "International business firms suffering heavy financial losses." Mob contact Johnny Roselli was at first leery of the plot and later suspected he might be working with the CIA.

• First reported by Jack Anderson in 1971, Giancana suggested the use of poison pills instead of guns.

• Two Cuban contacts with access to Castro tried, on several occasions, to plant the poison pills but failed. The first potential assassin, Juan Orta, was replaced after he got "cold feet." After the Bay of Pigs, the project was canceled, and the pills were returned to the CIA's possession.

• At the height of negotiations, Giancana wanted the CIA to wiretap the Las Vegas hotel room of his girlfriend, actress Phyllis McGuire, as he suspected she was having an affair with a costar. The CIA tech assigned to plant the wiretap was caught in the act and arrested by a Las Vegas sheriff. Robert Kennedy was briefed on the situation, and he ordered the prosecution dropped.