One of blackest of the black arts of espionage is the assassination operation designed to disguise who was reallly responsible.
Case in point: a newly-disclosed CIA plot to kill Raul Castro, commander of the Cuban armed forces, by making it look like he died in a plane crash.
From Peter Kornbluh, a leading Cuba scholar, in SpyTalk:
Read more
Was JFK going to make peace with Cuba?
On November 5, 1963, President Kennedy was exploring the idea. You can hear JFK talking about it with aides on this White House tape recording. (The substantive conversation starts at :25 in the recording.)
Read moreNate Jones, author and director of the FOIA Project of the non-profit National Security Archive, has a succinct answer:
The non-profit National Security Archive at George Washington University leads the way.
This calendar year alone the National Security Archive has filed suit against the Trump administration four times – including for access to the White House visitor logs and to prevent the destruction of Presidential records by Trump and his staff. As the Des Moines Register’s Editorial Board notes in a history of the law, “As with many of the rights we cherish, we must tirelessly work to ensure the public’s access to public information is protected.”
The Gerald Ford White House significantly altered the final report of the supposedly independent 1975 Rockefeller Commission investigating CIA domestic activities, over the objections of senior Commission staff, according to internal White House and Commission documents posted today by the National Security Archive at The George Washington University
Source: Ford White House Altered Rockefeller Commission Report
A revealing document from UNREDACTED, the blog of the nonprofit National Security Archive illuminates how CIA officers pondered carrying out political assassinations. Read more
In face of a persistent legal challenge from the National Security Archive, the CIA continues to resist releasing an internal history of the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs more than a half century ago. The struggle for Volume 5, as the history is known, is an epic legal contest
Why the secrecy about something that happened so long ago?
That question was the subject of a recent historian’s roundtable: National Security Archive v. Central Intelligence Agency.
Matt Taylor of Vice nails the larger point about the court decision sparing the CIA from embarrassment on Capitol Hill and in Havana: “The intelligence community has arguably never been as important or powerful as it is now…”
CIA wins secrecy for Bay of Pigs history reports POLITICO.com.
“This decision would put off limits half of the contents of the National Archives,” said Tom Blanton, director of the non-profit National Security Archive.
Lisa Howard, ABC News reporter
In response to Two secret memos on JFK and Cuba, John Simkin, the British historian wrote the following essay that gives valuable context to this neglected story.
Simkin writes:
“The secret negotiations that took place between the JFK administration and the Cuban government could be significant issue in the JFK assassination.
“A key figure in this was Lisa Howard.
At the time of his death President Kennedy was thinking about it — and thinking hard. You can even hear JFK talking about it: just click here.
In 2003, Peter Kornbluh, an analyst at the non-profit National Security Archive in Washington, obtained a White House tape recording about JFK’s Cuba policy, made on November 5, 1963.
Would this man lie to you?
“Despite heavy competition, Clapper’s ‘No, sir’ lie to Senator Ron Wyden’s question: ‘Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?’ sealed his receipt of the dubious achievement award, which cites the vastly excessive secrecy of the entire U.S. surveillance establishment.”
via the National Security Archive.
Sunshine Week comes to Washington March 16-22.
Every year the open government community in Washington, which includes everyone from the nonprofit National Security Archive to Project on Government Oversight to Cause of Action, get together to highlight the need for more open government. JFK Facts will be there too.
In 2014, most Americanns are barred by law from visiting Cuba, the island nation closest to America. When it comes to Cuba, Amrica’s vaunted ideals of “free trade” are frankly repudiated by the government in Washington which justifies violation Americans’ freedom to travel in the name of supporting democracy and human rights.
A half century ago, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy came to believe that the ban on travel to Cuba was “inconsistent with “our views of a free society,” as these historic documents collected by the non-profit National Security Archive reveal..
If you want to keep up with the latest U.S. national security disclosures, you can do a lot worse than the National Security Archive Facebook page.
Where else are you going to find an authoritative guide to the U.S. government’s views of Nelson Mandela when he was arrested in 1962.
Jefferson's Morley compulsively readable, and deeply reported biography of CIA spymaster James Angleton is "the best book ever written about the strangest spy chief who ever lived," says Tim Weiner. From the OSS to the CIA to MKULTRA and JFK, Angleton was a ghost of American power. BUY THE GHOST NOW.
In Our Man in Mexico, investigative reporters tells the remarkable story of CIA station chief and what he really thought of JFK's assassination. Click on the cover image to buy it now.