In the 1960s, the CIA Fired Some Employees Over a Cafeteria Fight

A version of this story originally appeared on Muckrock.com.

We’ve written about the CIA’s frustrations with its cafeteria before, with grievances both petty and the stuff of nightmares. But as internal records unearthed in the CIA’s Records Search Tool reveal, at least once that frustration exploded into a full-on mealtime melee.

The file, discovered by Mike Best, is simply entitled “Diary Notes,” and begins about as exciting as you’d expect it to be.

This turns out to be a bit of burying the lead, as here’s the very next entry:

A lot to unpack here, but the use of the term “additional employees” seems to imply that not only this wasn’t the first time this had happened, but it wasn’t even the first time people had been fired for it, but alas, no other recorded incidents of vittles-related violence could be found.

However, with considerable effort, and using up the very last of our favors within the intelligence community, we were able to get CIA security footage of the incident:

You’re welcome. The full diary entry is available here.

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