Week in Review: Witness to a Failed Mission

An interview with a first-hand witness to a failed Cuban operation, plus a look back at a SEE magazine exclusive: 'Wanted, Dead or Alive for Crimes Against Humanity'

This newsletter took a vacation last week while I toured western Massachusetts and enjoyed my hobby by visiting its covered bridges. This one is the Eunice Williams (no relation) Covered Bridge, named for a settler who was murdered on this site in 1704 during a conflict that came to be known as the Deerfield Massacre.

JFK Facts posted these stories in my absence, and I am catching you up on them here.

After JFK Facts published Malcom Blunt’s piece about declassification of CIA operational files, referring to the files on the 1963 Bayo-Pawley mission, Peter Voskamp recalled his interview with Richard Billings, the LIFE magazine staff writer who took part in the failed mission — a CIA-connected attempt to rescue Russians from Castro’s Cuba — also known variously as Operation Tilt and Operation Red Cross.

This story resonates today, as Voskamp noted that the Assassination Records Review Board (ARRB) made a deal with the CIA to gain access to those operational files based upon the concept o…