Hit men and CIA mind control This group digs for truth behind US secrets usatoday com story news politics 2025 12 12 national-security-archives-cia-government-secrets 87705583007 Michael Loria December 13 2025 1 5 POLITICS Martin Luther King Jr National Security Archive analysts have uncovered everything from assassination plots to programs to secretly give citizens LSD The work the group says aims to keep government in check Updated Dec 12 2025 9 28 p m ET A secret Central Intelligence Agency mind control program National Security Agency spy operations aimed at Martin Luther King Jr and Muhammad Ali A federal manual for political assassinations It's not just the stuff of spy novels It's also part of the daily work of the National Security Archive which is turning 40 The archive a self-described group of activist archivists is not a government agency and collects declassified documents acquired through the Freedom of Information Act and other sources Since its founding in 1985 the group has uncovered some of the nation’s darkest secrets including transcripts of top U S officials discussing covert operations and memos from spy masters These documents reveal what was done in the name of the American people but without their knowledge Peter Kornbluh an analyst with the group since 1986 told USA TODAY These declassified documents are the currency of history They contain the words positions and operations of foreign policy actors of the United States of America and often they contain summaries of operations in other countries that are the only documentation of what happened there so they will remain forever invaluable The group is celebrating their 40th anniversary this week Documents obtained by the archives group shed light on everything from how U S officials backed coups in Latin America to the torture of terrorist suspects at black sites after 9 11 According to legal experts and government watchdogs the body of work produced by the archive serves a vital function in the nation by providing a check on government power Without those 20 historians archivists and document nerds government would be more able to control public narratives said Stephen Kinzer the author of books on the nation’s covert operations around the globe Their work is especially important under an Administration as dedicated to secrecy as this one The group’s anniversary comes at a point where Americans are calling for government transparency   2 5 President Donald Trump came into office and quickly moved to release long-secret files namely related to the assassinations of former President John F Kennedy his brother and presidential candidate Robert F Kennedy and civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr Recently widespread calls for the Justice Department to release files from the investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spurred Congress to pass the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act on Dec 10 the House passed a bill that would force the Pentagon to release video showing a military strike on survivors of a U S attack on an alleged drug cartel vessel However according to scholars some of the most telling files in the nation’s history have only come to light through the work of determined analysts at the archive Here’s what to know about the trove of documents the group has uncovered from a 702-page collection of CIA files that include a government memo on plans to assassinate Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba to the MKULTRA files a CIA program to develop mind control techniques by testing drugs including LSD on unwitting U S citizens The CIA the Mob and Fidel Castro Among the archive’s biggest coups is a 702-page collection of CIA files known as the family jewels report The documents detail 25 years of Agency misdeeds the archive said in releasing the files in 2007 One memo titled Potentially Embarrassing Agency Activities lists a catalogue of CIA plans that have since become classic examples of how top government leaders lost control of the agency   Among items listed in the 1973 memo was a program to influence human behavior through the administration of mind or personality altering drugs to unwitting subjects confirmation that there was quite extensive Agency involvement in the assassination of Rafael Trujillo dictator of the Dominican Republic and plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro 3 5 The memo notes that CIA plans to kill Castro had already been reported on in the media While the columns contained many factual errors the allegations are basically true Covering the release of the documents USA TODAY reported the documents included a 1960 plot to poison Cuban leader Fidel Castro by conspiring with organized-crime figures and an aide to tycoon Howard Hughes We will find in the press coverage of today's release reminders of some things the CIA should not have done CIA Director Gen Michael Hayden was reported saying The documents truly do provide a glimpse of a very different era and a very different agency 'The people’s information' How the archive gets the files Archive analysts rely on the Freedom of Information Act FOIA to gain access to the long-secret documents The federal law dating back to 1967 obligates government agencies to turn over records to the public with some exceptions The group says they have filed tens of thousands of FOIA requests over the decades and has filed 75 lawsuits to ensure files were handed over in accordance with the law Georgetown Law professor Cliff Sloan is an attorney who has represented the archive in some of their biggest cases A former government official Sloan said he understands the need to classify some government information But he takes on the cases he says because he views the information shedding light on government operations as in the country’s best interest We’re a democracy and the people have a right to know what the government is doing unless there’s a very good reason said Sloan who teaches constitutional law That's the people’s information As distrust in government rises Sloan said shedding light on government dealings grows more important In this age of disinformation and dramatically conflicting narratives get the facts out there get the truth out there and let people make their own decisions he said Cleaning out the attic When Kornbluh started at the archives a former Washington Post investigative journalist taught him that it’s important to know what exactly to ask for in a FOIA request and a good place to start is by asking former government officials 4 5 That tip led him to offer to help clean out the attic of a former intelligence analyst during the Kennedy administration The official gave him a storage list for documents related to the Cuban missile crisis that included document titles and where exactly they were being kept   The crisis came during the fall of 1962 when the Soviet Union attempted to place nuclear missiles in Cuba It’s considered the closest the U S and the Soviets came to nuclear war Among documents obtained from the storage list were secret correspondence between Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev that lent deeper insight into how the two nations avoided war To understand the Cold War what’s more important than understanding how we got into the worst crisis associated with it and how we got out of it the longtime archivist said That's really the mission of the archive— to strengthen the pillar of an informed citizenry   5 5