Following President Donald Trump’s executive order directing, in January, the full release of John F. Kennedy assassination documents, I interviewed the person I believe is the reigning expert on JFK files, Jefferson Morley. With the release of thousands of documents on Tuesday evening, this is a follow-up on how things look now that the first tranches of documents have been revealed, mostly without redactions. This is a preliminary look only, as it will take some time to analyze the secrets in these documents—but some patterns are emerging, filling in this jigsaw puzzle of a historical mystery.
First, what was released? According to the National Archives website, where the documents are housed, 1,123 documents, totaling 32,000 pages, were released at 7 p.m. Later, at 10:30 p.m., an additional 1,059 documents, totaling 31,400 pages, were placed online. Given that Trump promised 80,000 pages, there are still documents set to drop, including new FBI documents, supposedly 2,400 in total. It appears that almost all redactions have been eliminated.
In a statement, the Mary Ferrell Foundation, where Morley is a vice president, said this document dump (the documents are completely disorganized, with no index) was the “most positive news on the declassification of JFK files since the 1990s.”
What are some of the big takeaways from the release and redaction of these thousands of documents? Start with documents that are blockbusters, such as the long-suppressed deposition transcript of the legendary James Angleton, the CIA counterintelligence chief who secretly testified before the Senate in 1975 about arrangements between himself and CIA assassination chief Bill Harvey regarding the use of Israeli intelligence operatives in Havana, Cuba.
William King Harvey was the CIA’s point man for the infamous Operation Mongoose, an assassination plot to remove Fidel Castro. The plan traces back to the Eisenhower administration and eventually involved Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy.
Much has been written about Operation Mongoose (code-named “ZR/RIFLE”), but it is still breathtaking to see a CIA chronology, without redactions, that lays bare the agency’s enlistment of assistance from criminal syndicate figures and the development of things like poison pills. One entry, for April 21, 1962, reads: “Harvey passes the pills to ROSELLI [“Handsome John” Roselli, a Chicago mobster] in Florida. Roselli was to give the pills to Varona [Tony Varona was a Cuban exile leader in Miami], who had an asset in Cuba with access to Castro’s restaurant.”
In fact, if one enjoys spy stories, this one could not be more intriguing and convoluted. Code names abound—and fortunately for researchers, the Mary Ferrell Foundation has collected CIA cryptonyms, so one can look up most of the references while going through the CIA reports. For example, one document refers to “AMCARBON-2,” a person who is defined as a “Miami Herald journalist who introduced [Ted] Shackley [CIA Miami station chief] to [Miami journalist] Al Burt/AMCARBON-1 in late 1962 to ensure that CIA always had access to a Herald reporter. One possibility is Dom Bonafede, who was the chief Latin American correspondent until mid-1963…. Status: Speculative.” Through this sort of exercise, we learn more about the identity of journalists whom the CIA was using in Miami in the early 1960s.
Fun for those who love to solve puzzles, but this is deadly serious stuff. The Kennedy administration inherited two profound problems, both intertwined, when JFK entered office in 1961: Cuba and the CIA.
With the new tranche of documents, we begin to put names to critical actors and operations that arose out of the US government’s near obsession with ending Castro’s experiment in Communism on that island 90 miles off Florida’s coast.
What emerges is a much more refined picture of an intelligence agency that worked outside normal channels, purposely, to overthrow or kill Castro—and somehow these forces intersected with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963, if not sooner. And perhaps things got out of control.
What would one expect of an agency that spent seemingly endless money and human resources to train and arm paramilitary forces of exiled Cubans for the purpose of violently overthrowing the Castro regime? What if those trained rebels turned on their hosts and trainers?
These documents provide further evidence that the Cuban exile community, whose family and friends were being tortured and executed by Castro, saw their mission to end the Castro government as a sacred duty—and eventually, President John F. Kennedy became a roadblock to plans of invasion.
We know that JFK withheld support at a dire moment during the 1961 failed Bay of Pigs invasion operation, resulting in the deaths of more than 100 Cuban exile soldiers and the capture of more than 1,100 Cuban exile rebels. Strike one. Then after the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, JFK wanted to cut off funding for further Cuban exile operations, as he tried to lower the temperature at a time when Cold War hostilities threatened to lead to nuclear war. Strike two.
