This note looks at a CIA record which is still redacted. Just because a record is redacted, however, doesn’t mean we can’t know what kind of things are redacted. In fact, with records such as this one, the things redacted are obvious. Taking this knowledge into account when we discuss the records is good. As Confucius said, knowing what we know, and knowing what we don’t know, that is true knowing.

AMWORLD 1964

AMWORLD was one of the more complicated CIA projects aimed at deposing Fidel Castro’s government, but you don’t need to understand all the ins and outs to read today’s note. All you need to know is that the main figure in AMWORLD was Manuel Artime. In 1964, Artime was running several base camps manned by anti-Castro paramilitary forces who were training to stage raids against Castro’s Cuba, while Artime looked for allies inside Cuba to stage a coup against the government.

The AMWORLD record we are looking at today is ARC 104-10308-10086. This is a CIA dispatch reporting on AMWORLD personalities and activities. It consists of nine separate items, ranging from info on the AMWORLD intelligence chief, navy section, and chief engineer, to the activities and plans of Artime (AMBIDDY-1). The sole redactions left in this record are on page 3, the “Identity sheet” which was sent under separate cover. This sheet gives the true names of people mentioned in the body of the dispatch, where they are labeled simply “IDEN A” to “IDEN N”. The redactions protect these “identities”.

Jefferson Morley’s take

Jefferson Morley’s name should be familiar to anyone who has read about the JFK records in the last few years. The AMWORLD dispatch has featured as a talking point in several articles in Morley’s JFK Facts substack. The article posted on 6/19/23 is typical.This article is based on an earlier release of the dispatch, where all 14 of the identities were redacted. The dispatch version cited above was released about a week after Morley’s article and releases three of these identities.

Morley’s note focuses on the last item in the dispatch, which reads, “The infiltration team with the mission of assassinating AMTHUG/1 (Castro) is headed by IDEN M. Date of the operation is unknown.”

Morley first comments, “Last December, the Biden White House approved the CIA’s decision to release the document while withholding the names of all the men involved. It is yet another blank page in the historical record of JFK’s assassination.” He then posts the iden sheet for the dispatch.

Morley’s claim seems to be that all the redacted identities were members of the infiltration squad assigned to kill Castro. Morley regards the CIA as both the originator, organizer, and facilitator of AMWORLD’s plan. This is bad, of course. According to Morley, “CIA’s persistent efforts to murder the Cuban leader over the course of 40 years is one of the most vivid displays of lawless U.S. foreign policy, a blatant and unprovoked violation of international law.”

In fact, according to Morley, the CIA sponsored “literally hundreds of plots to kill Castro.” These plots were “extensively documented” in the book “634 ways to kill Fidel”, by “former Cuban counterintelligence chief Fabian Escalante.”

Given Escalante’s book, Morley believes, “the names redacted [in the dispatch], while unknown to the American people, are well-known to Cuban security forces.” CIA is thus not protecting the names of the men involved. “What the CIA fears is not retribution or harm to national security. What it fears is embarrassment. The CIA cannot release these names without acknowledging its policy of assassination.”

The status of the dispatch identities

It is again worth pointing out that the text of the dispatch itself is released in full. All the information on AMWORLD activities is available to the public. Only names involved in the activities are withheld.

What are the identities being withheld? Here is a list of identities, one by one:
Main text: this provides informant names (IDEN A and IDEN B). These people provided the information in the dispatch to AMLILAC-33, the CIA asset who reported the info to CIA’s Miami Station. The true names of IDEN A and IDEN B were released in June 2023.
IDEN C: head of commando section where IDEN A served as instructor.
IDEN D: the location of the camp where the commando section trained
IDEN E: second in command of the section
IDEN F: AMWORLD intelligence chief
IDEN G: Chief of AMWORLD naval section
IDEN H: Naval section chief of operations
IDEN I: Assistant chief of naval operations
IDEN J: location of naval staging base. Released in June 2023 (= Nicaragua).
IDEN K: location of new naval base and airstrip
IDEN L: freelance photographer to film camps and publicize Artime
IDEN M: source for Artime plans, predicts collapse of AMWORLD “if things did not improve.”
IDEN N: AMWORLD chief engineer, in charge of constructing airstrips

IDEN M, it turns out, is also the one leading an infiltration squad to assassinate Castro.

As is typical in Morley’s posts, he has not searched for related records with further information on the dispatch. If he had, he would have found, among others, ARC 104-10308-10084. This is a summary of several documents in the AMWORLD files. The last of these summaries describes the dispatch we are looking at and gives the true name of IDEN M.

Thus at least one of the redactions in the dispatch is inconsistent with other releases. This is not a “zombie redaction”, which is what I call identical records with different redactions. It is, however, something which can and should be fixed.

For the rest of the redactions, note that three (D,J,K) were not people’s names, but place names. IDENs A and B, the informants, were “former members” of AMWORLD, not current. They thus had nothing to do with the “infiltration squad.” In fact, IDENs C, E, F, G, H, I, L, and N were not identified as squad members either. Only IDEN M was named as a squad member (the leader, in fact).

This dispatch is thus a general report of the latest info on AMWORLD personnel, Artime’s plans, and the group’s situation. Only one item mentions an assassination attempt, in contrast to Morley’s skewed description, where he skips 9/10s of the content and then claims that the redactions are all about that 1/10 he did mention.

My two cents

Sooner or later, all of the redactions in this AMWORLD dispatch will have to come off, even though the name of the AMWORLD assistant naval operations chief is surely irrelevant to the JFK assassination. Such is the requirement of the JFK Act. Sooner is better than later, please. Spare us more articles like Morley’s.

Aside from his skewed description and failure to research relevant records, Morley’s claims are baffling here. The redacted dispatch plainly records AMWORLD’s vague scheme of infiltrating Cuba and assassinating Castro, yet Morley denies this. Only by releasing ALL of the redacted identities in this one short record can CIA acknowledge “its policy of assassination,” says Morley.

Total nonsense. CIA acknowledged its assassination plots against Castro in its 1967 IG report, now released in full. The plots were the subject of an extensive Congressional investigation and lengthy report and have been acknowledged many, many times in CIA publications and public statements.

Perhaps Morley thinks CIA should acknowledge the other 630+ plots to kill Fidel in the Escalante book. Morley’s bland acceptance of Escalante’s claims and his “extensively documented” book is ultra nonsense. Is Cuban counterintelligence more reliable than American counterintelligence? Why? As for extensively documented, the book is 272 pages long, it would have to cover almost three plots a page just to describe them all. How extensive can any documentation be?