Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 14. April 2011 / Time Line April 14, 2011
Version 3.013. April 2011, 15. April 2011
04/14/2011
National Security Archive Update, April 14, 2011
CIA Sued for "Holding History Hostage" on Bay of Pigs
Invasion
National Security Archive files FOIA lawsuit to Force Release of
"Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation" on 50th
Anniversary
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. As the "official history," the
court filing noted, the document "is, by definition, the most
important and substantive CIA-produced study of this episode."
The Top Secret report, researched and written by CIA historian Jack
Pfeiffer, is based on dozens of interviews with key operatives and
officials and a review of hundreds of CIA documents and was
compiled over the course of nine years that Pfeiffer served as the
CIA's in-house historian. Pfeiffer's internal study is divided into
five volumes: I, Air Operations; II, Participation in the Conduct
of Foreign Policy; III, Evolution of CIA's Anti-Castro Policies,
1951-January 1961; IV, The Taylor Committee Report; and V, Internal
Investigation Report. (In 1998 the CIA released Vol. III under the
Kennedy Assassination Records Act.)
In 1987, Pfeiffer himself filed a FOIA lawsuit seeking the release
of Vol 5; the CIA successfully convinced the court that it could
not be declassified.
"The CIA is holding history hostage," according to Peter Kornbluh,
who directs the Archive's Cuba Documentation Project. Kornbluh
called on the CIA to release the report under President Barack Obama's Executive
Order 13526 on Classified National Security Information which
states that "no information may remain classified indefinitely." He
noted that "fifty years after the invasion, it is well past time
for the official history to be declassified and studied for the
lessons it contains for the future of U.S.-Cuban relations."
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