Word: contra
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...nation picks through the wreckage of the Iran-contra affair for lessons, a dispute is brewing within the intelligence community that could throw new light on the granddaddy of all covert-action fiascos: the Bay of Pigs. The CIA's former chief historian, Jack Pfeiffer, is suing to force the release of his detailed and still classified studies on the invasion, which challenge the conventional historical wisdom about why it failed...
...agency's intelligence division and other military analysts pretty much in the dark, thus resulting in a poor assessment of the risks involved. Indeed, a still secret case study prepared for the Tower commission, one of a series that sought to compare previous covert activities with the Iran-contra affair, also attributes the Bay of Pigs failure to excessive secrecy of CIA planners and lack of adequate review by intelligence experts...
After 25 years, Pfeiffer thinks it is time for his own studies of the fiasco to be made public. "Kirkpatrick's order to destroy the documents was outrageous," he commented last week. "What's to say the CIA's records on the Iran-contra matter won't disappear the same...
...state department of corrections announced last week that it had finally found a home for Singleton. His new address: Richmond (pop. 78,000), a blue collar Contra Costa suburb of San Francisco. State officials were unclear about whether Singleton would stay permanently in the area, but his neighbors certainly acted as if he was there for good. Some 200 protesters rallied at Richmond's city hall, chanting "He must go!" and listening to local politicians denounce Singleton. Said Mayor George Livingston: "My suggestion would be to put him on the barge where that garbage is and let him float away...
Authorities sympathize with the public's anger, yet contend that they have little choice. According to state policy, parolees are frequently housed in the county where they lived before they were convicted, and in Singleton's case that is Contra Costa. "When we make a decision to place someone, we make it on the department's experience and on legal grounds, not on emotion," explains Department Spokesman Robert Gore. Says Jerome Skolnick, a professor at the law school of the University of California, Berkeley: "If ((communities)) could reject notorious felons, no one would want them and where would they...