Peter Kornbluh is the director of the Cuba and Chile Documentation Projects at the National Security Archive (NSA), a nongovernmental organization that works toward declassifying government documents and making them available to the public. He is also the co-author of the book Back Channel to Cuba: The Hidden History of Negotiations between Washington and Havana. Kornbluh and host Robert Scheer discuss how documents obtained by the NSA gave the public new and important information about the death of activist Che Guevara and the resolution of the Cuban missile crisis. Kornbluh says recently declassified documents about JFK's assassination show the high level of secrecy and espionage that the FBI and CIA were engaging in at the time of his death. He emphasizes that transparency in government is absolutely essential to holding officials accountable for their actions.
Photo by Jeremy Bigwood/Institute for Policy Studies