US Tried Same Tricks With Cuba

[Eric Cordian <emc@wire.insync.net>]

While the US Government tries to whip up public opinion for the mass
murder of more Iraqis, filling the press with inflammatory statements,
most of which are based on no new information, and the inability to
prove negatives, newly declassified records demonstrate that such
antics have been used by the government before.
 
Should the US, claiming to represent "the will of the whole world,"
launch an unprovoked military strike against Iraq, based on some vague
claim that Iraq has not had its industrial infrastructure disemboweled
to the point where it will never again be able to perform even the
simplest chemical or biological laboratory work, I would hope that all
thinking non-sheep in this country would avail themselves of every
covert opportunity to monkey-wrench the US War Machine.
 
UN economic sanctions demanded by the US against Iraq have already
directly resulted in the deaths of over 1,000,000 Iraqis of all ages.
 
-----
 
WASHINGTON (AP) -- America's military leaders signed off on a scheme
in 1963 to provoke Fidel Castro into attacking the United States so
that retaliating U.S. forces could squash him ``with speed, force and
determination,'' newly declassified records show.
 
The records were among 600 pages opened at the National Archives by a
government agency, the Assassination Records Review Board, to help
researchers into John F. Kennedy's Nov. 22, 1963, assassination
explore the possibility of a Cuban connection and to ``put the
assassination into its historical context.''
 
Some Cuban involvement has been theorized because of slain suspect Lee
Harvey Oswald's association with the Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
 
``These military records further demonstrate how high on the U.S.
government's radar screen getting rid of the Castro government was in
the early 1960s,'' said John R. Tunheim, a federal judge in Minnesota
and the board's chairman.
 
The documents showed that in February 1962 the Joint Chiefs of Staff
and Deputy Defense Secretary Roswell Gilpatric approved a plan to
``lure or provoke Castro, or an uncontrollable subordinate, into an
overt hostile reaction against the United States.''
 
The attack ``would in turn create the justification for the U.S. to
not only retaliate but destroy Castro with speed, force and
determination,'' the memo said.
 
It was not clear where along the chain of command the plan eventually
was squelched.
 
But by the following year, another Pentagon policy paper discussed a
new scheme to make it appear that Cuba had attacked a member of the
Organization of American States so that the United States could
retaliate.
 
Five scenarios were spelled out, foreseeing either real or faked Cuban
attacks on a U.S. ally.
 
One of them: ``A contrived 'Cuban' attack on an OAS member could be
set up, and the attacked state could be urged to take measures of
self-defense and request assistance from the U.S. and OAS.''
 
The paper expressed confidence that ``the U.S. could almost certainly
obtain the necessary two-thirds support among OAS members for
collective action against Cuba.''
 
The planners got cold feet, the documents show. They feared leaks.
 
``Any of the contrived situations described above are inherently,
extremely risky in our democratic system in which security can be
maintained, after the fact, with very great difficulty,'' a memo said.
 
``If the decision should be made to set up a contrived situation, it
should be one in which participation by U.S. personnel is limited only
to the most high trusted covert personnel.''
 
The documents were the second set about Washington's preoccupation
with getting rid of Castro to be made public by the board. Late last
year, 1,500 pages showed that military planners had come up with a
variety of dirty tricks intended to harass or humiliate Castro.
 
One prescribed flooding Cuba with faked photos of an overweight Castro
``with two beauties'' and ``a table brimming over with the most
delectable Cuban food'' to make the point that Castro's lifestyle was
richer than that of most Cubans.
 
In the new set of papers, one prepared by the Defense Department's
Caribbean Survey Group and dated Feb. 19, 1962, wanted to make Castro
so fearful of an imminent U.S. attack that he would call up the Cuban
militia. The purpose was ``a complete disruption of the available
labor force'' for the 1962 sugar cane harvest.
 
Another, a psychological warfare proposal dated Feb. 12, 1963,
proposed the creation of an imaginary Cuban resistance leader. The
paper called him ``our Cuban Kilroy.''
 
``After a period of time, all unexplained incidents and actions for
which credit has not been seized by some other exile group would
automatically be ascribed to our imaginary friend,'' the paper said.
``At some point in time it could be leaked that the U.S. is, in fact,
supporting this imaginary person.''
 
Eventually, the paper speculated, ``a member of the resistance in Cuba
may gain sufficient stature to assume or to be given the title of this
imaginary leader.''
 
The Pentagon documents were written after the disastrous April 1961
invasion of Cuba's Bay of Pigs by Cuban exiles trained, armed and
directed by the United States.

-- 
Eric Michael Cordian 0+
O:.T:.O:. Mathematical Munitions Division
"Do What Thou Wilt Shall Be The Whole Of The Law"