A covert action anniversary

Granma’s lead on-line article marks the 50^th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s “Program of Covert Action Against the Castro Regime,” and says that “decades later, the intention to destroy the Cuban Revolution remains latent in the United States government.”

A short, excerpted version of the now-declassified 1960 document is here, noting that the “first requirement is the creation of a responsible, appealing and unified Cuban opposition to the Castro regime.” A re-typed copy of the whole thing (with just a few parts blacked out) appears as an annex to a CIA post-mortem on the Bay of Pigs operation, beginning on page 161 (pdf).

In the U.S. government it’s forgotten, irrelevant, ancient Cold War history. In the Plaza de la Revolucion it’s a foundation document for a 50-year public campaign that attempts to discredit all domestic opposition as the creation of a foreign power.