Week in Review: A Trip to the AMSANTA Document Trove
And a response to a troll who dissed the JFK Library
Recently declassified CIA documents reveal the operational architecture of AMSANTA, a covert program that deployed Communist Party infiltrators across more than a dozen countries to penetrate Fidel Castro’s Cuba during the presidency of John F. Kennedy. The Assassination Records Review Board, which declassified millions of pages of JFK documents in the 1990s, released a handful of AMSANTA documents in 1999. The board never saw the entire AMSANTA file. The AMSANTA files became public after Rep. Anna Paulina Luna requested them from CIA Director John Ratcliffe.
JFK Facts Editor Jefferson Morley did a deep dive into the new AMSANTA files and found two memos disclosing — for what appears to be the first time — that CIA counterintelligence chief James Angleton and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover personally authorized an operation to penetrate a leftist organization, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee (FPCC), to which accused presidential assassin Lee Harvey Oswald belonged.
What the new documents collectively establish is what the CIA long denied: that the FPCC was under active joint CIA-FBI penetration at its national leadership level at precisely the moment Oswald was its most visible street-level activist.
The FBI’s program for infiltrating and disrupting Hoover’s political enemies was known as the Counterintelligence Program or COINTELPRO. The AMSANTA files shed new light on the CIA’s role in COINTELPRO-type activities.
For more on the FPCC infiltrators and why the files were hidden — some pages are still marked DENIED — see The Gift of AMSANTA.
Troll Alert
Chad Nagle took exception to second-generation neoconservative John Podhoretz’s online comment about the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library. Podhoretz wrote that it was “lousy.” Nagle disagrees, chronicling some great material he has found on the JFK Library website while searching for images to accompany stories here on JFK Facts. Chad is our photo editor, as well as a reporter, writer, and cohost of the JFK Live Zoom meeting every Thursday night. He offers this tip for photo researchers:
Readers of JFK Facts might be interested to know that public domain images from the JFK Library are for sale on stock photo sites. For instance, if you want to pay for this Christmas photo of JFK and his family in Palm Beach, freely downloadable from the JFK Library, Getty Images is offering it for up to $500. Just go here to pay for it.
In defense of the library, Nagle throws some shade right back at “Mr. Angry Pants.” By the way, in our journalism world, editors — not reporters — write the headlines, so don’t blame him for that one.
Maybe Podhoretz is feeling lonely and bitter, and that’s made him lash out at the poor old JFK Library to try to steady his nerves. By all indications, President Kennedy would have given this irritable, mean-spirited philosopher a wide berth.
This Week There Was an Anniversary
It’s the 65th anniversary of the CIA-backed invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. It was the topic of our weekly subscriber discussion, JFK Live. Watch for the Thursday announcement of next week’s subject or guest. Hosts Chad Nagle and Larry Schnapf try to steer it straight on topic, but the freewheeling meeting often veers off course.
Nominated for the JFK Playlist
JFK Facts’ Peter Voskamp “stumbled” upon two JFK assassination-related songs … or are they?
British post-punk band the Wedding Present’s “Kennedy” is a definite yes: read the lyrics. But an earlier song from Brit post-punk band Magazine called “Motorcade” is a maybe yes, maybe no:
This song’s lyrics are arguably more oblique than those in the Wedding Present’s tune, and harder to parse. Is Oswald the small fry? Who is taking the shot?
Should we ask Ryan Carter to add these to his Ultimate JFK Assassination Playlist on Spotify? We would need to find them on Spotify first.
How much US taxpayer money has been spent waging a war against Castro and the Cuban people? Billions of dollars? For what? So former Cuban plantation owners, wealthy American corporations which had assets in Cuba, and Mafia casino owners get their plantations, corporate assets, and casinos back? Would most Americans choose to spend their taxes fighting to make these people whole? My guess: no, not by a long shot. I have to agree with the righties. We certainly do not live in a democracy.