Former Cuban-Born CIA Operative Dies At Age 92

[AlphaCentauri]

One of the central figures in one of the most embarrassing foreign policy blunders in recent American history has died. Bernard Leon Barker, a Cuban-born CIA operative lost his fight with lung cancer at the age of 92 on Friday. Barker was a key figure in the failed Bay of Pigs invasion during the Kennedy administration.

But it wasn't just the Bay of Pigs invasion that made Barker quite infamous. He also took part in some of the darkest days in U.S. presidential history, the Watergate break-in era. Barker was one of the "Plumbers" employed by the Nixon administration. The Plumbers were tasked with stopping the leaking of information from the Nixon administration.

The Plumbers were formed as a response to the publication of the Pentagon Papers, which detailed the U.S. involvement in Vietnam from the end of World War II until 1968. Plumbers would go on to break into the psychiatrist of the leaker of the Pentagon Papers, Daniel Ellsburg.

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