WASHINGTON - The CIA released hundreds of pages of once secret documents describing assassination plans, wiretaps and domestic spying.

CIA Director Michael Hayden said Tuesday the decades-old documents include "reminders of some things the CIA should not have done," The Washington Post reported.

The "family jewels" as the papers have been known within the CIA, included a description of a plan to assassinate the premier of the Republic of Congo and an offer of $150,000 to the Mafia to kill Fidel Castro. There were also reports of the CIA's surveillance of The Washington Post during the Watergate era, the Post reported.

The CIA is prohibited from domestic spying but that didn't stop it from engaging in it during the Vietnam War and the Cold War, the documents showed.

"Reading these memos is like sitting in a confessional booth and having a string of former top CIA officials say 'Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,'" Tom Blanton of the National Security Archive told The New York Times.

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