Background Operation Mongoose, officially known as the Cuba Project, was a covert operation launched by the United States government in 1961 with the primary objective of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s communist regime in Cuba. Initiated under President John F. Kennedy and spearheaded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), it represented a heightened phase of the U.S.’s Cold War strategy against communism in the Western Hemisphere. The operation was a response to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and the increasing Soviet influence in Cuba, which was perceived as a significant threat to U.S. national security, especially after the discovery of Soviet…
Author: John Greenewald
Background A “broken arrow” is an accidental event that involves nuclear weapons or nuclear components but which does not create the risk of nuclear war, known as a Broken Arrow in United States military terminology. Below are documents obtained under the FOIA regarding Broken Arrow incidents. Declassified Documents DoD Instruction 7730.12, “Notification Procedures for Accidents and Significant Incidents Involving Nuclear Weapons, Reactors and Radioactive Materials” [7 Pages, 1.16mb] Summary of Navy Nuclear Weapon Accidents (1975, 1976, and 1977 Supplement) [2 Pages, 0.2MB] – This is a bizarre story, and one of the most frustrating situations since I started The Black…
According to Wikipedia: Non-lethal weapons, also called less-lethal weapons, less-than-lethal weapons, non-deadly weapons, compliance weapons, or pain-inducing weapons are weapons intended to be less likely to kill a living target than conventional weapons. It is often understood that accidental, incidental, and correlative casualties are risked wherever force is applied, but non-lethal weapons try to minimize the risk as much as possible. Non-lethal weapons are used in combat situations to limit the escalation of conflict where employment of lethal force is prohibited or undesirable, where rules of engagement require minimum casualties, or where policy restricts the use of conventional force. Non-lethal…
The following were obtained after a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for all versions of the video presentation, “NRO: The Nation’s Eyes and Ears in Space”. I was surprised to find 3 different versions of the presentation, and all had slates they were approved for release around the same day that I received them. Which means, they probably have not been available in this form, ever before. NRO Release Letter [ 2 Pages, 0.5MB] You can view all three versions of the video here: Version 1 Version 2 Version 3 Background on the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) The following…
This is the official version of the killing of Osama bin Laden, as chronicled by Wikipedia: Osama bin Laden, the founder and head of the Islamist militant group al-Qaeda, was killed in Pakistan on May 2, 2011, shortly after 1:00 am PKT (20:00 UTC, May 1) by Navy SEALs of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Development Group (also known as DEVGRU or SEAL Team Six). The operation, code-named Operation Neptune Spear, was carried out in a Central Intelligence Agency-led operation. In addition to DEVGRU, participating units included the U.S. Army Special Operations Command’s 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Airborne) and…