CIA sued to disclose a history of the Bay of Pigs by in-house historian

Villanova political science professor David Barrett knows more than most about the Central Intelligence Agency. The university boasts that Barrett is actually “one of the country’s leading experts on the critical relationship between the United States Congress and the … CIA,” and Barrett has authored two books about the agency. And now, he’s taking the CIA to court. 

Naturally, some explanation is in order.

It all started in 2005, back when the Louisiana native was in his fifteenth year of teaching at the school. Barrett was down in Washington, D.C., doing some academic research at the National Archives, when he spied a curious box just sitting around.

“It was marked ‘CIA Miscellaneous,'” Barrett recalls. He opened the box, of course, finding a lengthy document inside. It turned out to be one of five volumes on the Bay of Pigs invasion written by Jack Pfeiffer, who worked as the CIA’s own historian.

The volume had been declassified. Barrett gave it a read and found some surprising information inside. He said one account in the volume explained that prior to the Bay of Pigs invasion, the CIA director met with the heads of large corporations that had big money in Cuba. ...