I know people think the word ‘fascist’ gets tossed around frequently by people of the libertarian/anarchist persuasion, and I am especially guilty of this. However, in this case it is appropriate. What else would you call a group who rule in the name of the people but who hatch plans to murder Americans in order to further a political, nationalist agenda?
According to the book in this article, beginning in 1959 the Joint Chiefs of Staff of the US Military drew up plans which “included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.” The goal, of course, was to overthrow the dangerous communist leader, Fidel Castro.
The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba’s then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.
America’s top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: “We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba,” and, “casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation.”
Code named Operation Northwoods, these plans also involved blaming any potential disasters occurring during the launch of the first American manned space flight on Castro.
These signed plans were presented to President Kennedy’s defense secretary, Robert McNamara, by Army Gen. Lyman L. Lemnitzer in March 1962. Apparently they were rejected by the civilian leadership. However, the military continued to mastermind ‘pretext’ plans to lead a US overthrow of Cuba through 1963.
One idea was to create a war between Cuba and another Latin American country so that the United States could intervene. Another was to pay someone in the Castro government to attack U.S. forces at the Guantanamo naval base — an act, which Bamford notes, would have amounted to treason. And another was to fly low level U-2 flights over Cuba, with the intention of having one shot down as a pretext for a war.
The thing that really gets me is that Americans today are naive or stupid enough to believe anything the government, especially the military tells them. The military and intelligence bureaucracies in general are pyramid organizations controlled by corrupt Machiavellian-types. They operate in secret without public accountability. We know that they consume trillions of dollars in public funds, but we never know what they do. Now we know a little more of what they’re up to. A little more that can be added to the long litany of criminality that we do already know about: assassinations, lies, deception, inhumanity, injustice, and corruption. Who knows what will come out in another 40 years? Is there any reason to believe anything has changed? Given the recent history of crimes suggested in the Enron scandal, the Florida election fraud, and the botched coup in Venezuela, I don’t think so.