It’s been a while since President Trump’s directive to unseal the vast trove of documents related to John F. Kennedy’s assassination. And while the full picture is still a complex mosaic being pieced together, the initial releases are starting to paint a more vivid, and at times, unsettling, portrait of the era.
When thousands of pages, many of them unredacted, landed online, it felt like a significant moment. For those who’ve dedicated years to sifting through the existing records, like Jefferson Morley, it was hailed as the most positive development in declassification since the 1990s. The sheer volume is staggering – over 1,100 documents initially, followed by another thousand, totaling tens of thousands of pages. And there are still more to come.
So, what’s emerging from this deluge of information? Well, some of the truly blockbuster revelations come from documents that have been held back for decades. Take, for instance, the deposition transcript of James Angleton, the CIA’s counterintelligence chief. His testimony, given in 1975, touches on arrangements he had with Bill Harvey, the CIA’s point man for Operation Mongoose, concerning the use of Israeli intelligence operatives in Havana. It’s a name that pops up in discussions about plots to remove Fidel Castro.
Operation Mongoose itself, a name that still sends shivers down the spine, was an ambitious, and frankly, chilling, assassination plot. Seeing a CIA chronology of it, laid bare without redactions, is quite something. It details the agency’s collaboration with figures from the criminal underworld and the development of rather sinister tools, like poison pills. One entry from April 1962 is particularly stark: Harvey passing pills to “Handsome John” Roselli, a Chicago mobster, who was then meant to deliver them to an operative with access to Castro’s dining table. It reads like a spy novel, but the stakes were terrifyingly real.
And the complexity doesn't stop there. The documents are filled with code names and cryptic references. For researchers, tools like the Mary Ferrell Foundation’s CIA cryptonym index are invaluable, helping to decipher who’s who. We’re learning more about how the CIA was leveraging journalists in Miami, using them as conduits for information and access. One reference points to a “Miami Herald journalist” who introduced a key CIA operative to another reporter, ensuring the agency always had a connection to the newspaper. It’s a fascinating, if slightly unnerving, glimpse into the intelligence apparatus of the time.
Ultimately, what these new files underscore is the deep entanglement of Cuba and the CIA in the Kennedy administration’s early days. The US government’s intense focus on dismantling Castro’s communist experiment created a climate where clandestine operations, often operating far outside normal channels, became the norm. The question that lingers, and which these documents seem to push us closer to answering, is how these intense efforts to destabilize Cuba intersected with Lee Harvey Oswald, and whether events spiraled out of control.
It’s a sobering reminder of the immense resources poured into training and arming Cuban exiles, driven by a fierce desire to see Castro’s regime fall. For many in the exile community, it was a mission of profound personal significance, fueled by the suffering of their families. And as history shows, President Kennedy’s decisions, particularly his withholding of support during the Bay of Pigs invasion, placed him at a critical, and perhaps ultimately fatal, crossroads with these powerful forces.
