华盛顿，2026年4月16日——根据国家安全档案馆在对古巴准军事攻击65周年之际发布的记录，在中央情报局领导的猪湾入侵失败后，约翰·F·肯尼迪总统曾考虑重新配置甚至拆除该情报机构。
根据一份攻击发生一个月后提交给肯尼迪、鲜为人知的秘密备忘录，总统要求他的白宫助手亚瑟·施莱辛格（Arthur Schlesinger）审查“英国的情报体系”，以确定“在我们自己考虑中情局重组时，有哪些有价值的东西”。
施莱辛格建议总统说：“在英国的经验中，特别令人感兴趣的不是情报和行动之间的划分，而是保持秘密行动部门处于持续政策控制之下的手段。”
这份日期为1961年5月18日、题为《如何组织情报机构：英国范例》的文件，连同去年全份解密的第二份施莱辛格关于“中情局重组”的备忘录，都被收录在国家安全档案馆今天为纪念猪湾入侵而发布的一组特别的前秘密记录中。
该选集还包括一份详尽的中情局秘密报告，内容涉及其在入侵前与黑手党合作刺杀菲德尔·卡斯特罗的行动（该阴谋由入侵预算支付），以及来自中美洲的关于中情局准备发起流亡分子攻击该岛的古巴情报报告。
今天的周年发布还重点推介了中情局绝密的、长达100页的《监察长对古巴行动的调查》——这是一份严厉的、具有自我批评性的机构事后总结，被认为极其敏感，以至于中情局局长约翰·麦科恩（John McCone）焚毁了现有20份副本中的大部分，以使该报告远离像施莱辛格这样寻求让该机构对猪湾惨败负责的批评者。中情局副局长威廉·卡贝尔（William Cabell）在1961年12月的一份备忘录中指出，“如果落入敌手”，监察长报告可[能]
WASHINGTON, April 16, 2026 – In the wake of the failed CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion, President John F. Kennedy considered reconfiguring and even dismantling the intelligence agency, according to documents posted by the National Security Archive on the 65th anniversary of the paramilitary assault on Cuba.
The President tasked his White House aide, Arthur Schlesinger, to examine “the British intelligence set up” to determine “what of value there might be for our own thinking about CIA reorganization,” according to a little-known secret memorandum to Kennedy dated a month after attack.
“What is of special interest in the British experience is, not the division between intelligence and operations,” Schlesinger advised the President, “but the means by which the clandestine service is kept under continuous policy control.”
The May 18, 1961, document, titled “How to Organize an Intelligence Service: The British example,” along with a second Schlesinger memo declassified in full last year on “CIA Reorganization,” are included in a special collection of formerly secret records posted today by the National Security Archive to commemorate the Bay of Pigs invasion.
The selection also includes a comprehensive secret CIA report on its collaboration with the Mafia to assassinate Fidel Castro in advance of the invasion – a plot paid for out of the invasion budget – as well as Cuban intelligence reports from Central America on the CIA’s preparations to launch an exile attack on the island.
Today’s anniversary posting also highlights the top secret, 100-page CIA “Inspector General’s Survey of the Cuban Operation” – a scathing, self-critical, agency postmortem considered so sensitive that CIA director John McCone burned most of the 20 existing copies to sequester the report from critics, like Schlesinger, who sought to hold the Agency accountable for the Bay of Pigs debacle. “In unfriendly hands,” CIA Deputy Director William Cabell noted in a December 1961 memorandum, the IG report “could become a weapon unjustifiably used to attack the entire mission, organization, and functioning of the Agency.”
After several years of FOIA efforts, the National Security Archive obtained the declassification of the CIA inspector general’s report – the historical Holy Grail of the Bay of Pigs – in the late 1990s.
The inspector general’s “survey” was conducted by CIA veteran officer Lyman Kirkpatrick, who spent almost six months interviewing officials and reviewing thousands of contemporaneous records. Among his main conclusions:
The operation was predicated on CIA deputy director Richard Bissell’s assumption that “the invasion would, like a deus ex machina, produce a shock … and trigger an uprising” against Castro. Yet, the CIA had “no intelligence evidence that Cubans in significant numbers could or would join the invaders ….”
What was supposed to be a covert operation became a major overt military project “beyond the Agency’s responsibility as well as Agency capability.” Security
