Government Officials Destroying the Evidentiary Record (JFK Assassination Files)

Government Officials Destroying the Evidentiary Record (JFK Assassination Files)

An important responsibility of ethical government agencies is the ability to provide documentary evidence of viable importance for later historical study. To occlude, purposefully withhold files, and even destroy evidence is the antithesis of government transparency and provides reasons to doubt official intentions regarding any matter of controversy. Official concerns about the public reaction to noted violations of law are irrelevant and do not provide a legal reasoning for destroying records. Yet by nineteen sixty-seven the Dallas Police investigation, FBI Investigation, Warren Commission, and Garrison Case had left several questions in the public mind regarding assassination of President John F. Kennedy. It was also during this period that military intelligence was undertaking several illegal programs that further incentivized the need for destroying files…

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Killing the Wrong Revolutionary

Killing the Wrong Revolutionary

During the Cold War the United States government spent tens perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars seeking the death of their greatest perceived communist nemesis in the Western hemisphere, Fidel Castro. He was everything business interests and corporations feared, a formerly rich person who embraced violent populism, nationalization of industry, and overturning the established order of Cuban society for communal doctrine. Years passed and the foretold implosion of the Castro regime failed to materialize due in part to widespread internal popularity and the brutal repression of dissident voices. This left a stark enemy camped just less than one hundred miles from the United States and Cuba began to dominate the imagination of several anti-Communist leaders. Yet what if Fidel Castro was not the true communist influence but instead just the dominant ego of the regime, what if all those failed plots were not just a costly series of failures but failed targeting the right Castro…

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Cold War Business

Cold War Business

Few periods of history enjoyed the economic growth and prosperity generated by the fear and mistrust of the Cold War. The aftermath of the Second World War left political alliances frayed and the ambitious governments of Russia and the United States taking diametrically opposite social positions. Previous World War II funding and materials supplied by the United States to Russia was redistributed to set up democratic bulwarks in Western Europe. Stalin and the Communist Soviet regime annexed roughly half of Europe while a deep freeze settled over world policy and these two superpowers drew lines across the world…

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Cuban Relations

Cuban Relations

In the Central Intelligence Agency files regarding Cuba under the Batista regime, Fidel Castro "manages to get himself involved in many things that do not concern him." "Beginning in 1948, the activities of Fidel Castro came to be of increasing concern to the Central Intelligence Agency and the United States Government (USG)." Despite the allegations of some officials, no direct link to Communism was established in Castro's history until after hostilities with the United States. "In fact, Agency support for the peaceful transfer of power from Batista to a democratically elected successor and amnesty for Castro and his followers...was proposed in a memorandum from the Inspector General in November 1957...

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