The first set, the so called "Family Jewels," consists of almost 700 pages and details the CIA's illegal spying activities at home, including tapping journalists' phones, shadowing anti-Vietnam war protesters, dissidents, and plotting the assassination of foreign leaders, including Cuba's Fidel Castro and African anti-colonial leader Patrice Lumumba.
The documents are part of investigations launched in 1973 under Central Intelligence Director James Schlesinger, "who asked CIA employees to report activities they thought might be inconsistent with the Agency's charter," the CIA Web site said.
The second set, the CAESAR-POLO-ESAU papers, consists of 147 documents and 11,000 pages of analysis from 1953 to 1973. These studied Soviet and Chinese domestic policies, their bilateral relations, and information on the Warsaw Pact military programs.
CIA Director Michael Hayden said earlier the declassified documents offered "a glimpse of a very different time and a very different agency."