Washington, DC, October 1, 2012 – The Armageddon Letters - a transmedia project (multiplatform storytelling) launched on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis - takes visitors behind the scenes during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the most dangerous crisis in recorded history.
Washington, DC, May 10, 2012 – More than year after the National Security Archive sued the CIA to declassify the full "Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation," a U.S. District Court judge today sided with the Agency's efforts to keep the last volume of the report secret in perpetuity.
Washington, D.C., August 15, 2011 - In the heat of the battle at the Bay of Pigs, the lead CIA field operative aboard one of the transport boats fired 75mm recoilless rifles and .50-caliber machine guns on aircraft his own agency had supplied to the exile invasion force, striking some of them. With the CIA-provided B-26 aircraft configured to match those in the Cuban air force, “we couldn’t tell them from the Castro planes,” according to the operative, Grayston Lynch. “We ended up shooting at two or three of them.
Washington, D.C., August 1, 2011 - Pursuant to a FOIA lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive on the 50th anniversary of the infamous CIA-led invasion of Cuba, the CIA has released four volumes of its Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation. The Archive today posted volume 2, "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy" (Part 1 | Part 2), classified top secret, which contains detailed information on the CIA's negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Panama on support for the invasion. "These are among the last remaining secret records of this act of U.S.
Washington, D.C., April 14, 2011 - Fifty years after the failed CIA-led assault on Cuba, the National Security Archive today filed a FOIA lawsuit to compel the Agency to release its “Official History of the Bay of Pigs Invasion.” The suit charges that the CIA has “wrongfully withheld” the multi-volume study, which the Archive requested under the FOIA in 2005.
Washington, D.C., January 11, 2011 - As the unprecedented trial of Cuban exile Luis Posada Carriles begins this week in El Paso, Texas, the National Security Archive today posted a series of CIA records covering his association with the agency in the 1960s and 1970s. CIA personnel records described Posada, using his codename, “AMCLEVE/15,” as “a paid agent” at $300 a month, being utilized as a training instructor for other exile operatives, as well as an informant. “Subject is of good character, very reliable and security conscious,” the CIA reported in 1965.
Washington, D.C., October 6, 2009 - On the 33rd anniversary of the bombing of Cubana flight 455, the National Security Archive today posted recently obtained CIA records on Luis Posada Carriles, his ties to "the Company" and role as an informant on other violent exile groups. The documents provide extensive details on a collaboration between Cuban-American militant Jorge Mas Canosa, who rose to become the most powerful leader of the hardline exile community in Miami, and Posada—codenamed AMCLEVE 15—who volunteered to spy on violent exile operations for the CIA.
Washington D.C. April 23, 2009 - Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy sought to lift the ban on U.S. citizens traveling to Cuba in December 1963, according to declassified records re-posted today by the National Security Archive.
Washington, D.C., January 22, 2009 - In March 1975, a top aide to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger drafted a secret/nodis report titled "Normalizing Relations with Cuba" that recommended moving quickly to restore diplomatic ties with Havana. "Our interest is in getting the Cuba issue behind us, not in prolonging it indefinitely," states the memorandum, which was written as the Ford administration engaged in secret diplomacy with Castro officials to lessen hostilities.
Washington, DC, June 4, 2008 - Soviet nuclear-tipped cruise missiles were ready to destroy the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo had the U.S. military persuaded President Kennedy to invade Cuba during the missile crisis in 1962, according to a new book by Washington Post reporter Michael Dobbs (citing documents and interviews posted here today by the National Security Archive).