On May 10, 2012, a U.S. District Court Judge ruled that the CIA did not have to declassify the last volume of their report, Official History of the Bay of Pigs Operation.

Allegedly, this last volume contains the CIA’s former Chief Historian’s (Jack Pfeiffer) accusations of CIA officials who openly criticized the invasion in its aftermath. However, due to the recent ruling, this argument may never be verified.

The Bay of Pigs Invasion was a CIA-backed operation to overthrow Fidel Castro. On April 16, 1961, a CIA-trained group of Cuban exiles stormed Playa Girón beach. Roughly 1,500 anti-Castro exiles went up against a Cuban force that was nearly 235,000 strong.

The Cuban forces were made up of the army, the militia, and about 9,000 armed police. The action failed miserably. As a result, about 1,200 of the exiles were captured, while the rest were killed. The failed invasion was an embarrassment to the Kennedy White House and allowed Fidel Castro to tighten his grip on Cuba.

In the aftermath of the failed operation, President Kennedy seemingly tried to take responsibility by stating, “What matters is only one fact, I am the responsible officer of the government.”

However, officially the CIA was blamed for most of the failures. Then in 1961 a report titled Survey of the Cuban Operation ,found issues with the CIA’s intelligence gathering, training, communication, and risk assessment.











No Information Shall Remain Classified Indefinitely

The May 10th ruling is a result of a lawsuit filed by the National Security Archive to force the CIA to release the final volume. The full release of the Bay of Pigs report has been a long standing mission of the National security Archive.

The National Security Archive filed the lawsuit claiming that the CIA’s refusal to release the last volume violates Presidential Executive Order 13526, which states that “no information shall remain classified indefinitely.” The document in question has been classified for more than 50 years.

Judge Gladys Kessler ruled on the side of the CIA because volume five is categorized as a draft. According to the CIA, volume five is, “…an internal draft of a CIA history that was never approved for release or publication.” T

he current CIA Chief Historian, David Robarge, contends, “The release of an unfinished draft of CIA history risks placing inaccurate or incomplete information into the public domain.”

It seems that such an argument was enough for Judge Kessler, who agreed in her ruling when she stated, “disclosure of a draft history would risk public release of inaccurate historical information.”