CIA Releases Files on Invasion of Cuba

Washington, Aug 2. – Pressured by a lawsuit, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on Monday released another group of files of its so-called official history of the U.S.-organized invasion of Cuba 50 years ago at Playa Giron.However, the CIA still refuses to declassify the fifth of five volumes that make up its history of the April 1961 events, known in the United States as the Bay of Pigs invasion.

The release of four volumes of the secret CIA papers was in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the independent National Security Archive on the 50th anniversary of the failed attack.

"These are among the last remaining secret records of this act of U.S. aggression against Cuba," said Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuba Documentation Project at the Archive, according to a press release on the archive's website.

Volume 2, posted on the Archive website on Monday, is "Participation in the Conduct of Foreign Policy," and contains details on CIA negotiations with Guatemala, Nicaragua, Panama and the United Kingdom on support for the invasion.

"Volume 5 is a rebuttal to the stinging CIA's Inspector General's report, done in the immediate aftermath of the paramilitary assault, which held CIA officials accountable for a wide variety of mistakes, miscalculations and deceptions that characterized the failed invasion," the Archive press release says.

The National Security Archive obtained the declassification of the ultra-secret Inspector General's report in 1998.

"Volume 3 of the Official History was previously declassified under the Kennedy Assassination Record Act; and volume 4 was previously declassified to the CIA historian, Jack Pheiffer, who wrote the study in the late 1970s and early1980s," Kornbluh said in the press release.

The Archive will post a detailed assessment of the declassified history, along with two other volumes, the press release said.(Prensa Latina)