The Federal Bureau of Investigation has a long history of focusing on left-wing activists and politicians, often to the exclusion of groups of actual concern. This pattern continues to this day, as recently documented by Property of the People. The FBI’s file on Ramparts magazine shows how this attitude reflected in internal communications - unable to take to Twitter, agents were forced to scribble right-wing talking points in copies of the magazine.

Oliver White Hill is among the country’s most important civil rights attorneys of the 20th century, known for pursuing cases to dismantle segregation in Virginia before and after serving in the army during World War II. The Federal Bureau of Investigation’s file on Hill, however, offers its own remarkably skewed, racist, and paranoid view of Hill’s work, in keeping with Director J. Edgar Hoover’s deeply held suspicion of the Civil Rights movement.

As a result of the JFK Assassination Records Collection Act, the Central Intelligence Agency ostensibly produced a copy of the Hart Report, more famously known as the “Monster Plot,” which was intended to be a definitive account of the Yuri Nosenko affair and a takedown of disgraced spymaster James Angleton. What the CIA actually released, however, resembles Hart’s actual report as much as the television edit of The Big Lebowski resembles the actual dialogue.

As part of MuckRock’s ongoing project to declassify and collect internal Central Intelligence Agency histories, the Agency recently released a copy of the history on coordination between inbetween intelligence agencies in the aftermath of World War II. The history outlines various “turf wars,” some which predate the Agency itself, which were the result of disagreements about what the law said and who had what responsibilities. According to the history, many of these disagreements and differing interpretations stemmed directly or indirectly from the language of the National Security Act of 1947, which both established and empowered the CIA, as being “purposefully vague.”

The details of the negotiations and planning surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis have long been the subject of some contention for historians, with some of the most influential and enduring accounts contradicting what the tapes of those planning sessions tell us. Almost immediately after the Cuban Missile Crisis resolved, rumors began floating around Washington D.C. that the narrative that emerged was the handiwork of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy in an effort to force the resignation of Adlai Stevenson, Kennedy’s Ambassador to the United Nations. A Central Intelligence Agency chronology, originally classified SECRET and recently released to MuckRock, confirms that the architect of this historical revisionism was, in fact, Kennedy - and reveals that denials of this were based on nothing more than word games.

In 1978, a JFK assassination hoax emerged that continues to fuel conspiracy theories and accusations against the Central Intelligence Agency. Two news stories began to circulate claiming that the House Select Committee on Assassinations had obtained an alleged 1966 CIA memo placing Howard Hunt, of Watergate infamy, in Dallas on the day of President John Kennedy’s assassination. Some conspiracy enthusiasts have tried to use the two articles to corroborate each other, unaware that they shared the same source. A review of over 1,000 pages of documents and testimony gives the story of - and dismantles - the HSCA memo hoax.

Fifty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was fatally shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Five years prior, President John Fitzgerald Kennedy had been killed by a rifle in Dallas, Texas. The deaths of both men generated conspiracies of government complicity, which in 1976 led to the establishment of the House Select Committee on Assassinations. A copy of its final report is preserved in the Central Intelligence Agency’s declassified archives.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation never conducted an investigation focused on acclaimed author Truman Capote, who was at work on his classic In Cold Blood when his name first appeared in the Bureau’s files. Though the agency declined to look into direct requests related to the writer’s safety and reputation, his file nevertheless stretches over 100 pages, in no small part because he was among those who supported, for a time, the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.

Panama has a long history of coups and interventions involving the United States that go back to the establishment of the Panama Canal, some of which resulted in pro-U.S. governments, while other seemed to benefit Communist groups. Documents show that the confessed assassin of Panamanian President José Antonio Remón Cantera was a Central Intelligence Agency asset, and that at least one other CIA asset was on the scene and arrested at the time of the assassination in 1955. Both also share ties to the Cuban community, as well as vague connections to the JFK assassination - and one of them may have also been involved in a plot to kidnap and/or assassinate Vice President Spiro Agnew and CIA Director Richard Helms.

Some researchers in the JFK assassination community are aware of the fact that one of the doctors that treated Jack Ruby was none other than Louis Jolyon West, a figure equally infamous for allegedly killing an elephant with LSD and for his work in MKULTRA - the Central Intelligence Agency’s infamous interrogation, hypnosis, and mind control program.