CIA releases tranche of secret documents, but keeps juiciest nuggets classified

[link to www.blacklistednews.com]
AUSTIN, Texas — On the morning of Oct. 18, 1962, 36 hours into the Cuban Missile Crisis, the CIA presented President John F. Kennedy with the sobering news that seven out of 12 potential Soviet launch sites in Cuba “now have missiles on launcher,” and at least some of them are “probably operational.”

That’s just one of the nuggets contained within a 19,000-page treasure trove of secret documents the CIA declassified on Wednesday, an unprecedented mass release of daily intelligence briefs the agency once crafted for Presidents Kennedy and Johnson.

The roughly 2,500 briefs, spanning from 1961 through 1969 and now publicly accessible and searchable on a CIA website, present an unparalleled window into the conclusions and inner workings of American intelligence in a bygone era.

SEE ALSO: CIA confirmed Oswald contacted Cubans, Soviets before assassination, memo shows

But there is a catch: Some 20 percent of the material in the documents has been whited out — considered still too sensitive for public dissemination a half-century later.

Despite the passage of time, intelligence officials felt extensive redactions were necessary to protect “national security,” according to a CIA fact sheet. Even in the missile crisis brief given to Mr. Kennedy, chunks of information are missing.

The release was the highlight of a ceremony at the LBJ Presidential Library on Wednesday with CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper in attendance.

The material covers a momentous period that witnessed the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother Robert and Martin Luther King, along with a string of international Cold War clashes from the standoff with the Soviet Union over Cuba to the Johnson administration’s struggles in the Vietnam War.

But the documents also run the geopolitical gamut — from India-China border violence to civil wars in Yemen and the Congo, the reign of Mao Zedong in China and Gamal Abdel Nasser in Egypt, the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Six-Day War between Israel and Arab states.

Wednesday’s release includes the “President’s Intelligence Checklist,” typically an eight-page brief produced daily for President Kennedy and known in the intelligence community as the “Pickle” because of its acronym: PICL.

It was the precursor of the “President’s Daily Brief,” which the CIA began producing for President Johnson in 1964 and that the intelligence community continues to this day to produce, albeit in a revised digital format, for President Obama.

“The PDB is among the most highly classified documents in all of our government. It represents the intelligence community’s daily dialogue with the president in addressing the challenges and seizing the opportunities related to our national security,” Mr. Brennan said Wednesday. “For students of history, the declassified briefs will lend insight into why a president chooses one path over another when it comes to statecraft.”

President Kennedy’s assassination is barely mentioned, aside from one brief on Nov. 25, 1963 — just three days after he was shot in the head in Dallas. The brief alerts newly appointed President Johnson that “press stories to the effect that Lee Harvey Oswald recently visited Mexico City are true.”
Source: Washington Times

Last Edited by Account Deleted by User on 08/29/2016 06:07 PM