“No information may remain classified indefinitely.” –President Obama, in Executive Order 13526.

A version of this article originally appeared in Perspectives on History, an American Historical Association publication, with an introduction by Allen Mikaelian and alongside articles by former chief CIA historian Kenneth McDonald, and Cuba, Latin America, and the Caribbean historian Michael Bustamante.

The National Security Archive was disappointed, but not surprised, that in a two-to-one decision the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, in May 2014, agreed with the Central Intelligence Agency that a volume of its 30-year-old history of the 53-year-old Bay of Pigs Invasion could “confuse the public” and should thus be kept secret. To win this argument, the CIA successfully convinced Judges Brett Kavanaugh and Stephen Williams (Judge Judith Rodgers identified multiple contradictions in her strong dissent) that any document the agency deems “predecisional” can be withheld ad infinitum.

The claim that the…